Todd and Beth Mathison, the former owners of West Plains Fitness, have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection here.

The Mathisons say they were forced to sell that business, located at 1515 S. Technology Lane, last summer when a lender suspended the home-equity line of credit they had been using to finance business debt. In their filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court here, they list assets of $691,000 and debts of $828,000.

The largest secured claim identified in the filing is for $203,000 owed for a third mortgage on a house in Tekoa, Wash., to Bank of Whitman. That claim is secured both by equipment bought for West Plains Fitness and by the home, which the Mathisons rent out. The largest unsecured claim in the filing is for $27,000, to JPMorgan Chase & Co., for tanning beds used at the business.

The Mathisons say that earlier this year, they received notice that because the value of their primary residence had fallen, a line of credit they used to finance business expenses was being suspended.

Todd Mathison says he tried unsuccessfully to get other funding.

The Mathisons say the owner of the building where they leased space for the gym told them another business, Oz Fitness Inc., of Spokane, was willing to take over the lease and the space.

Because Oz Fitness said it would honor West Plains Fitness' memberships and prepaid items, such as tanning, the Mathisons agreed to sell the business's memberships to Oz Fitness for $1, Beth Mathison says. In exchange, the Mathisons were released from the lease by the landlord, Granite Investments LLC, though they still owe that company about $25,000 on the lease.

The Mathisons say the transition was made very rapidly at the request of the new owner. "We left Sunday night, and the next morning it was Oz Fitness," Todd Mathison says.

"It was very hard for us. We had to just walk away," Beth Mathison adds. The Mathisons opened the gym in January 2007, and had about 550 memberships.

"We were where we thought we would be," Beth Mathison says. Both of the Mathisons continue to work at their longtime jobs at Metals Fabrication, in Airway Heights, where they had continued to work while operating West Plains Fitness.