The historiography of bankruptcy and insolvency in the early modern era focusses on merchants and banks. The position of landowning noble elites in insolvency procedures has less often been explored. The Lower Austrian Lamberg seigneurial archive contains rich documentation on the insolvency procedures against the counts of Lamberg-Sprinzenstein – one of the largest landowning families in Lower Austria – between 1735 and 1768. Based on this source material, this article presents a case study treating the question of how political and judicial authorities in the Habsburg Empire dealt with insolvent aristocrats. The analysis is contextualized by a detailed reconstruction of the debt and asset structure of the Lamberg-Sprinzenstein estate. The most important policy enacted to regulate the debt crisis of the noble landowners was ‘judicial administrations’ during which a judicial official took over the administration of the landed patrimony and other assets. Compared to official norms regarding insolvency procedures, creditors had little say in how the debtors’ property was managed, and measures were taken to partially preserve the debtors’ wealth and social status. The majority of creditors were nobles. Non-noble creditors also acquired bonds on less favourable legal terms and ended up as losers in the debt crisis.