LEXINGTON — Former Gov. Wallace Wilkinson's request to change the status of his bankruptcy has been rejected.

        U.S. Bankruptcy Judge William Howard said Friday that Mr. Wilkinson's “motive is simply to upset” the progress of the case.

        Judge Howard set a hearing for Dec. 10 on whether to finalize a plan proposed by creditors for liquidating Mr. Wilkinson's assets. A trustee could begin the process of selling off Mr. Wilkinson's various businesses within days if the plan does become final.

        Mr. Wilkinson wanted to convert his Chapter 11 reorganization to a Chapter 7 liquidation.

        Either way, Mr. Wilkinson's assets will be sold off and the proceeds applied against his debts, but in Chapter 11 the liquidation is likely to be done under a plan proposed by Mr. Wilkinson's major unsecured creditors. Under Chapter 7, the liquidation would have been assigned to a trustee named by the U.S. Trustees Office.

        Those procedures, his attorneys argued, would provide more protection for the rights of both Mr. Wilkinson and his wife, Martha, who jointly owns some property with Mr. Wilkinson, and the court-appointed trustee would be a more objective overseer.

        At the end of a two-hour hearing Friday, Judge Howard ap proved that plan for submission to all creditors. The creditors have until Dec. 6 to vote to accept it or file objections. At the Dec. 10 hearing, any objections will be heard, and Judge Howard will then rule. If the plan is approved, there will be a 10-day period in which it can be appealed.

        Mr. Wilkinson's attorney, Robert Brown, argued that the creditors' plan puts Mr. Wilkinson “under the thumb of vindictive creditors.”

        He also said it would be less likely that the trustee would look into the question of whether payments Mr. Wilkinson had made to some creditors prior to his bankruptcy could be recovered. Such recoveries, Mr. Brown said, of fered the best hope of obtaining substantial sums to repay other creditors.

        Mr. Wilkinson's debts total more than $431 million, and his assets, creditors estimate, are worth about $26.5 million.

        But Mr. Wilkinson had a practice of making and repaying short-term, high-interest loans to many of his creditors, and those repayments added up to large sums. In the six months leading up to his bankruptcy, Mr. Brown said, Mr. Wilkinson had made $165 million in such payments.

        Attorneys for some of the major creditors in the case have argued that Mr. Wilkinson's attempt to convert to Chapter 7 was just a delaying tactic.

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