My wife and I personally guaranteed the lease payments.
I'm no professional on this. But if you two "personally" guaranteed the payments and the payments were made "after" the business was closed, shut down, bankrupted or whatever, then the payments were not made "in the normal course of business" and would therefore not be deductible on your personal tax return at all.
But like I said, I"m no professional on that aspect. Even though I suspect a real tax pro will tell you the same thing, you should seek professional help on this in case a tax pro knows things about tax law that we don't.
