Zoe Center for ABA, a five-state autism therapy provider, has filed Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Georgia, listing $1 million to $10 million in liabilities.
Key Takeaways
- The filing: Zoe Center for ABA and Development Services has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Georgia. The voluntary petition, case number 26-50809, was entered on May 13, 2026, and is assigned to Judge Robert M. Matson.
- The numbers: The petition estimates assets of $500,001 to $1 million against liabilities of $1 million to $10 million, with 100 to 199 creditors. The company is operating as a debtor in possession and says funds should be available for unsecured creditors, so services can continue while it restructures.
- What it owes: Merchant cash advance and other financing companies dominate the 20 largest unsecured claims, most of them disputed, alongside disputed tax debts to the Georgia Department of Revenue and the IRS. No state Medicaid agency or managed-care payer appears anywhere on the creditor list.
- A health care business, independently owned: Zoe identified itself as a health care business on its petition, the trigger for the patient care ombudsman process the court has taken up. The owner-operated business, which is not backed by private equity, no longer appears in the BHCOE accredited-provider directory.
Zoe Center for ABA and Development Services LLC, a Georgia autism therapy provider, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Georgia. The voluntary petition was entered on May 13, 2026, carries case number 26-50809, and is assigned to Judge Robert M. Matson.
Chapter 11 lets a company keep operating while it restructures its debts under court supervision, rather than liquidating as it would in a Chapter 7. The docket shows Zoe operating as a debtor in possession, with first-day motions on file to use cash collateral and to keep its existing bank accounts open, and a Chapter 11 meeting of creditors has been set. For the families whose children receive therapy through Zoe, that structure means services can continue during the case, even as the filing signals serious financial strain. The stakes are not hypothetical: in a separate matter, an ABA provider’s patients were given two weeks to find new care after a payer moved to end coverage.
What the petition shows
The petition estimates Zoe’s assets at $500,001 to $1 million and its liabilities at $1 million to $10 million, with between 100 and 199 creditors, and the company indicated that funds should be available for distribution to unsecured creditors. More detailed figures are not yet public: a notice of deficient filings entered the day after the petition shows the company opened the case without its full schedules of assets, liabilities, and creditors, or its statement of financial affairs, which remained due.
What the company did file, a list of its 20 largest unsecured creditors, points to the pressure behind the case. The list is dominated by merchant cash advance and other short-term financing firms, with most of the claims marked disputed. They include CAN Capital, the single largest unsecured claim at $197,850, along with Timeless Funding, I Lend-Advance, Forward Financing, Headway Capital, and several lenders holding disputed liens on the company’s personal property. Together those financing claims account for well over $1 million. The remaining large claims are disputed business tax debts owed to the Georgia Department of Revenue and the Internal Revenue Service, a roughly $104,000 lease claim from the landlord of the company’s Columbus building, and unpaid employee wages. Notably, no state Medicaid agency or managed-care payer appears anywhere on the creditor list, which points to cash flow and financing costs, rather than a payer clawback, as the immediate driver.
A health care business in bankruptcy
Zoe checked the box identifying itself as a health care business on its petition, the designation that calls for a patient care ombudsman under bankruptcy law unless the court finds one is not necessary to protect patients. Court records show the case has since taken up that appointment. An ombudsman, where appointed, monitors the quality of patient care and reports back to the court at regular intervals, a safeguard aimed at patients rather than creditors.
The case is being jointly administered with a related filing. The petition discloses that Stephanie H. Kong, M.D., and Basil Waine Kong, who own the company in equal shares and authorized the bankruptcy, filed their own Chapter 11 in the same district on the same day. The company is represented by David L. Bury, Jr., of Stone & Baxter in Macon.
A provider stretched across five states
Zoe provides applied behavior analysis therapy to individuals with autism and related diagnoses, including children and adolescents, delivered in homes, schools, community settings, and at centers in Columbus and Thomaston, Georgia. The petition lists Thomaston as its principal place of business and its Columbus center as the location of its principal assets. By its own account, the company operates across five states: Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. Georgia, its home base, has been a flashpoint over ABA Medicaid funding in its own right.
Its payer mix is broad and Medicaid-heavy. By the company’s own account, it accepts Medicaid across all five of its service states, along with Illinois Medicaid and a range of Medicaid managed-care plans, plus commercial insurers including Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield/Anthem, Cigna, Humana, Tricare, and UnitedHealthcare. None of those payers, however, appears among its listed creditors.
The company no longer appears in the accredited-provider directory maintained by the Behavioral Health Center of Excellence (BHCOE), the ABA field’s main third-party accreditor, and its former directory listing is no longer live. Zoe had held BHCOE accreditation in prior years, and its own website still refers to that accreditation in the past tense.
Zoe’s filing lands at a difficult moment for independent ABA providers, particularly Medicaid-dependent operators that lack the capital reserves of private equity-backed platforms, and it follows other autism care companies that have wound down operations this year. A run of state Medicaid rate reductions and intensifying payer scrutiny and government audits has squeezed provider margins across the country over the past year, a backdrop that can push independent operators toward the kind of high-cost financing that now tops Zoe’s creditor list. The picture will sharpen as the company files its outstanding schedules and a reorganization plan.
Acuity will update this story as further filings become available.
