Did Vanderbilt Minerals, LLC file for bankruptcy?

If you were paid by Vanderbilt Minerals, LLC recently, read this before you spend it. A trustee can sue to take back money the company paid you in the 90 days before it filed. The statute reaches any transfer made "on or within 90 days before the date of the filing of the petition" (11 U.S.C. 547(b)(4)(A)).

The dates, for this case. The petition was filed on 16 February 2026, so the 90-day window runs from 18 November 2025 to 16 February 2026. Money Vanderbilt Minerals, LLC paid you inside those dates is what a preference claim would be about. If you were an insider of Vanderbilt Minerals, LLC, and an ordinary supplier is not, the reach-back starts a year earlier on 16 February 2025 (11 U.S.C. 547(b)(4)(B), 11 U.S.C. 101(31)(B)).

Inside that window the law starts from the assumption the company was broke. 11 U.S.C. 547(f) says the debtor "is presumed to have been insolvent" during those 90 days, so nobody has to prove it was insolvent when your payment cleared. That is a presumption applied inside a preference action, and it is not a ruling that the company was insolvent for any other purpose.

There are real defences and suppliers win on them. The common one is that the debt and the payment were both ordinary course between you and this customer, or the payment was made on ordinary business terms (11 U.S.C. 547(c)(2)). Others cover getting paid at the same time you delivered (11 U.S.C. 547(c)(1)) and shipping more goods after the payment (11 U.S.C. 547(c)(4)). Since 2019 the trustee also has to act "based on reasonable due diligence" and take account of defences they know or could reasonably know about (11 U.S.C. 547(b)).

There is a small-dollar floor, and for this case it is $8,575. In a case where the debts are not primarily consumer debts, a transfer whose aggregate value is below that cannot be avoided under this section (11 U.S.C. 547(c)(9)). The figure printed inside the statute is the un-adjusted $5,000; $8,575 is the amount in force for a case commenced on or after 1 April 2025 (90 Fed. Reg. 8941 (Feb. 4, 2025), effective April 1, 2025; adjustment authority 11 U.S.C. 104(a)). It applies to this case because 11 U.S.C. 104(c) ties the amount to the date the case was commenced rather than to today.

Demand letters on preference claims go out routinely and often get reduced or dropped. The useful response to one is your payment history and a bankruptcy lawyer. Nothing here is legal advice and none of it is a prediction about your situation.