Freedom Forever Is Being Liquidated: The October 16, 2026 Claim Deadline Homeowners Are About to Miss

Not legal advice. Solar Exit Group is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice or represent anyone in bankruptcy proceedings. This article summarizes public reporting and publicly posted court procedures for informational purposes. Deadlines and procedures in a bankruptcy case can change by court order. Verify any date against the court docket before relying on it, and talk to a licensed attorney in your state about your own situation.

Last updated: September 11, 2026. Dates below are drawn from trade press reporting on the Chapter 7 conversion and from the Delaware bankruptcy court's own published claims procedures.

Short answer: what is the deadline and who does it apply to?

At a glance

What changed on August 7, and why it matters more than the original filing

Freedom Forever filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on April 15, 2026 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. (pv magazine USA) At the time, most coverage framed it the way Chapter 11 usually gets framed: a troubled company buying time to restructure, with some chance of emerging or being bought.

That chance is gone. On July 31, 2026 the company told the court it would seek to convert the case, and on August 7, 2026 the case was converted from Chapter 11 reorganization to Chapter 7 liquidation. (Solar Resource USA; pv magazine USA) The Office of the United States Trustee appointed Alfred T. Giuliano as Chapter 7 trustee to liquidate what remains. (pv magazine USA; Servoflows case tracker)

The distinction is not academic, and it is the single most useful thing for a homeowner to understand:

Colorado is a preview of the practical effect. After the conversion, more than 400 Colorado homeowners with Freedom Forever systems lost company support entirely, according to reporting on the collapse. (Denver Gazette, via now.solar) That is one state.

How big this is

Freedom Forever was not a small regional outfit. It was the second-largest residential solar installer in the United States in 2025 with roughly 6.1% market share, behind only Sunrun, and its share had already fallen to 3.9% by the final quarter of 2025. (PV Tech) Roughly 150,000 homeowners have systems the company installed. (Solar Power World)

The financial picture in the filing explains why the case ended in liquidation. The company reported assets between $100 million and $500 million against more than $500 million in debt, including over $100 million owed to Mosaic Funding IX and further tens of millions owed to panel manufacturers including JA Solar, Trina Solar, Jinko Solar and Silfab Solar. (PV Tech) The case involves more than 50,000 unsecured creditors. (Solar Resource USA)

The trouble was visible before the filing. In February 2026 the company laid off about 20% of its workforce and exited ten state markets. (Daily Reporter) And in early April 2026, days before the bankruptcy, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued Civil Investigative Demands to Freedom Forever along with Sunrun, Lone Star Solar Services and CAM Solar, investigating alleged violations of the Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act including misrepresentations about consumer savings, system efficacy, equipment, and company terms and policies. His office cited over 100 complaints filed with it and thousands more filed online. (Texas Attorney General) Those are allegations under investigation, not findings, and the bankruptcy has since overtaken the company itself.

Who should file a claim by October 16

Reporting on the Chapter 7 key dates identifies four groups covered by the bar date. (pv magazine USA) In homeowner terms:

Missing a bar date generally forfeits the claim permanently. If you are unsure whether your situation qualifies, the low-risk answer is to file and describe it accurately rather than to talk yourself out of it before the deadline.

How to file, step by step

First, confirm where claims go in this case. In larger bankruptcies the court appoints a third-party claims agent, and claims are filed with that agent instead of with the court. Kroll Restructuring Administration has served as claims and noticing agent in the Freedom Forever case and maintains a public case page at restructuring.ra.kroll.com/FreedomForever, so check there first for the current filing instructions and any court-issued claim form mailed to you. Where no claims agent is handling claims, they go directly to the court under the District of Delaware's own published procedures. (U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware) The steps below describe the court's process; the form and the deadline are the same either way.

1. Use Official Form B410, Proof of Claim. It is the standard federal form, available from the U.S. Courts official forms site. (uscourts.gov)
2. File electronically if you can. Where no claims agent is assigned, the court accepts claims through its website with no CM/ECF login required and strongly encourages e-filing; where an agent is assigned, use the agent's electronic filing portal instead. The online form lets you attach supporting documents, assigns a claim number, and can be saved or printed.
3. Or mail it. United States Bankruptcy Court, Attn: Claims, 824 Market Street, 3rd Floor, Wilmington, DE 19801. Build in mail time well ahead of October 16.
4. Identify yourself completely. Your name and full address must appear on the form, along with the name and title of whoever is authorized to file it. If an attorney files for you, their name and address go on it too.
5. Attach your proof. The contract, the canceled check or card statement for the deposit, the invoice you paid another contractor, photos, inspection reports, the warranty document, and your written attempts to get service. A claim with attached documentation is worth more than a number in a box.
6. State a specific dollar amount. Not "unknown," not "TBD." Add up what you actually lost and can show.
7. Be accurate. Filing a fraudulent claim carries a fine of up to $500,000, imprisonment for up to five years, or both, under 11 U.S.C. §§ 152 and 3571. Claim what you lost, not what feels fair.
8. Keep your filed copy. With the assigned claim number.

Questions about the mechanics of filing go to the court's claims help desk at 302-252-2887. Court staff can explain procedure; they cannot give you legal advice.

One caution on the September 22 meeting of creditors: it is a trustee proceeding, not a hearing where homeowners argue their cases, and attending is not a substitute for filing a claim. Filing by the bar date is the step that preserves your rights.

What filing is actually worth

We would rather be straight with you than sell false hope, so here is the arithmetic. More than $500 million in debt, assets reported at somewhere between $100 million and $500 million, secured creditors and priority claims ahead of general unsecured creditors, and more than 50,000 unsecured creditors in line. (PV Tech; Solar Resource USA) In a Chapter 7 with that shape, the realistic outcome for an individual homeowner's unsecured claim is a small percentage recovery or nothing at all, distributed years from now.

So why file? Three reasons, none of them "you will get a check."

1. It costs nothing but the time to fill out a form. There is no filing fee for a proof of claim. An option that free is worth exercising even at long odds.
2. The deadline is permanent. Preserving a claim you might never collect on is cheap. Reviving a forfeited one generally is not possible.
3. It creates a dated, documented record of your loss. You are compiling the contract, the payments, the promises, the photos, and the repair invoices into one place with a date on it. That file has value in conversations that have nothing to do with the bankruptcy — with your finance company, with a state attorney general's office, or with an attorney evaluating your paperwork.

Anyone who tells you a proof of claim in this case will clear your solar debt is misinforming you.

The part homeowners get wrong: your loan did not die with the installer

This is the most common and most expensive misunderstanding we hear, so it is worth stating plainly. Freedom Forever's liquidation does not cancel your loan, lease, or PPA.

The company that sold and installed your system is generally not the company that finances it. Freedom Forever largely used third-party ownership arrangements and lender partners, so the entity billing you every month is a finance company or investment fund that owns your contract, and that company is not in bankruptcy. Trade guidance for affected homeowners is direct about the consequence: the bankruptcy does not eliminate your contractual obligation, and you should keep making payments to whoever owns your contract. (Solar Power World)

Unilaterally stopping payment because the installer collapsed is how a bad situation becomes a worse one: late marks and collections activity on your credit, without any corresponding improvement in your legal position. If you believe you have grounds to challenge the financing itself, that is a real question — it is just a different question, aimed at a different company, on a different timeline, and it is one to raise with a licensed attorney rather than to act on alone.

If your installation was never finished

There is one piece of genuinely good news in the September docket activity. Former financing partners obtained relief from the automatic stay to resume and complete stranded installations, which allows them to hire new contractors, finish the physical work, and bring systems to permission-to-operate status. Those partners are Credit Human, EnFin, EverBright, GoodLeap, Participate, Project Solar and Sunrun. (pv magazine USA) EverBright had already taken its projects back. (Servoflows case tracker)

If you have panels on your roof that were never energized, or a job that stopped partway through, your finance company is now the party who can actually move it forward. Contact them in writing, reference your contract and project numbers, ask specifically who the replacement contractor is and what the timeline to permission-to-operate is, and keep the correspondence. Do that in parallel with filing your claim, not instead of it: getting your system finished and documenting money you already lost are separate matters.

What happens to your warranty

Sort your warranties by who issued them, because they are not in the same position:

Practical step: find out who actually made and monitors your equipment and register directly with them. Homeowners in this position routinely discover they can get replacement hardware from a manufacturer under an existing warranty even when no installer is left to install it.

The separate question worth asking

A collapsed installer and a loan that keeps billing is the exact pattern behind most of the solar financing disputes now working through courts, arbitrations, and regulators. The bankruptcy claim is one track. Whether the financing itself can be challenged is another, and it does not run on the bankruptcy's calendar.

Two things are worth knowing about that second track. The FTC's Holder Rule, 16 CFR Part 433, requires many consumer credit contracts to carry a notice stating that any holder of the contract is subject to all claims and defenses the borrower could assert against the seller, while capping recovery under the rule at amounts the borrower has paid. (16 CFR § 433.2, eCFR) Whether that notice appears in your financing agreement is a document question you can answer tonight by reading your paperwork. And in at least one Georgia arbitration, an arbitrator found that a bankrupt installer had acted as its lender's agent, held the lender responsible for the installer's conduct, and cancelled the homeowner's loan — an outcome we cover in detail in our GoodLeap solar arbitration explainer.

Neither of those is automatic and neither is triggered by Freedom Forever's bankruptcy. Regulators have separately described structural problems in how these loans were priced and disclosed, including in the CFPB's Issue Spotlight on solar financing and in the Minnesota Attorney General's lawsuit against four solar lenders, which we cover in our Minnesota AG case explainer. If you want the general process rather than the case law, start with how to cancel a solar contract.

Find the page for your financing company

Seven finance companies were granted relief from the automatic stay to resume stranded Freedom Forever installations, hire replacement contractors, and carry systems through to permission to operate. (pv magazine USA) Which one holds your paper changes nearly everything that follows: who owns the equipment on your roof, who is obligated to service it, what is recorded against your property, who to call, and what leverage you have. We built a page for each.

• Credit Human and Freedom Forever — a federally insured credit union with a published complaint process and lien-release procedure.
• GoodLeap and Freedom Forever — the lender with the most active legal record, including a Minnesota Attorney General suit.
• EnFin and Freedom Forever — Qcells' financing arm, newer, and backed by a large manufacturer.
• EverBright and Freedom Forever — a third-party owner of leases and PPAs, so it owns the system, not you.
• Participate and Freedom Forever — a 25-year on-bill tariff sold with no credit check, and the thinnest public record of the seven.
• Project Solar and Freedom Forever — the one partner that never publishes what its financing actually is.
• Sunrun and Freedom Forever — the only partner with its own installation crews, and the most state attorney general attention.

Not sure which company holds your financing? Check the payee on your bank statement or autopay record. That is usually faster than reading the contract.

Documents to pull before the portal goes dark

When a company liquidates, its customer portal, monitoring dashboard, and support lines are among the first things to disappear. Download everything now, while it still exists. (Solar Power World)

1. Your installation contract and every change order or amendment.
2. The financing agreement, in full, including the arbitration clause and any Holder Rule notice.
3. The sales proposal showing promised production, savings, rebates, and tax credit representations.
4. Every document in the Freedom Forever customer portal, exported and saved locally.
5. Production and monitoring history, exported from the monitoring platform, plus a screenshot of current output.
6. Utility bills for twelve months before installation and everything since.
7. Proof of every payment to Freedom Forever, including deposits.
8. Invoices from any other contractor you paid to fix or finish the work.
9. Photos of the array, the roof, and any damage, with dates.
10. All written communication with the installer and the lender, including service requests that went unanswered.
11. Any inspection, engineering, or roofing report.
12. Your UCC-1 or fixture filing status, if a lien was recorded against your property.

That list is not busywork. It is simultaneously the attachment set for your proof of claim, the raw material for any challenge to the financing, and the only version of the record that will exist once the company's systems are switched off.

How Solar Exit Group helps

Solar Exit Group is not a law firm, does not give legal advice, and does not represent homeowners in bankruptcy court. What we do is the unglamorous work that decides whether a claim goes anywhere: helping homeowners nationwide assemble what they already have into a clean, indexed case file. Contracts and amendments, the financing agreement and its notice and arbitration provisions, UCC filings, production and monitoring data, utility bills before and after installation, interconnection paperwork, and sales communications, organized into a timeline with a side-by-side of promises versus contract terms, payment history and escalator math, documented production shortfall, and lien status.

With your approval, we send that file to partner consumer-protection law firms licensed in your state, who can evaluate options such as unwinding a lease, PPA, or loan, removing a UCC-1 fixture lien, correcting a credit tradeline, or pursuing rescission or cancellation. The review is free, with no upfront cost, and no result is guaranteed. If your immediate need is the October 16 bar date, file your proof of claim with the court on your own or with an attorney — do not wait on anything else to do that.

FAQ

Get a free case review

If Freedom Forever installed your system, your work was never finished or never performed as promised, and your lender still expects payment, Solar Exit Group can help you organize your documents into a clear case file, at no upfront cost, with no obligation and no guaranteed outcome.

Call 833-765-2711 or email info@solarexitgrp.com.

Not legal advice. Solar Exit Group is not a law firm. We do not represent homeowners in bankruptcy proceedings and cannot file a proof of claim for you.

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