Welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Monday, December 1. In today's briefing, surprise heirs are popping up because of DNA test kits and sowing disorder for families handling their loved ones’ estates. And Puerto Rico’s Oversight Board conditionally approved a liquified-natural-gas contract with an affiliate of New Fortress Energy to secure power and save more than $4 billion. 

When Carmen Thomas was growing up in Boston, her mom told her that her absent dad’s name was Joe Brown. So when she sent a saliva sample to 23andMe in her 20s and got a match with a Brown, she was excited.

It turned out the man she believed to be her father had died five years earlier, but she connected with two likely half sisters. They went out for boba tea and at a sleepover at their grandmother’s, she looked through family albums and held a pillow with his photo printed on it.

A year later, she was suing the Brown sisters and their mother. Thomas wanted a share of a multimillion-dollar medical-malpractice award they had won after Joe Brown died of an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm. After all, she was his daughter too, Thomas said in a court complaint early last year.

Surprise heirs like Thomas are popping up because of DNA test kits, lawyers say, and wreaking havoc for families handling their loved ones’ estates. States are grappling with how to rewrite laws to address the issue, and lawyers are encouraging people to rethink their estate plans.

Puerto Rico’s Oversight Board gave conditional approval for a contract to supply liquified natural gas to the island’s main power plants with an affiliate of New Fortress Energy.

The deal is only approved if the government revises certain contract rules and ensures other suppliers can access the San Juan port, which NFE currently controls exclusively. Without this contract, Puerto Rico risks running short on LNG, which could reduce electricity generation.

Earlier contract versions had problems like long terms, giving NFE exclusive supply rights, uneven risk, and insufficient infrastructure. The updated proposal fixes many of these issues with a shorter term, smaller minimum purchases, options for other suppliers to deliver LNG, better payment rules that could save more than $4 billion.

Li Auto reported its first quarterly net loss in three years amid slowing demand and significant sales pressure, in a reversal of fortune for the plug-in hybrid specialist once considered one of the more successful Chinese automakers.

The company swung to a third-quarter net loss of 625.0 million yuan, equivalent to $88.2 million, from net profit of 2.81 billion yuan a year earlier. That missed the 439.8 million yuan profit consensus estimate in a Visible Alpha poll by a wide margin.

Revenue also undershot expectations, dropping 36% to 27.36 billion yuan. It was the company’s worst top-line decline since it listed in New York in 2020.

Economic worries aren’t putting much of a dent in consumers’ holiday shopping plans, with one glaring exception: Gen Z shoppers.

More than any other generation, young adults are tightening their year-end spending budgets and shelling out less for gifts, survey data shows. That is a problem for retailers and brands that look to Generation Z—a group that runs from teens to late-20-somethings—to drive shopping trends and boost spending steadily as they earn bigger paychecks.

This year, more are taking the tack of 25-year-old Sonia Iacoboni, who has already warned loved ones that she is spending less this season. The sales-account executive is paying rent for the first time and student loans, which together eat up $2,400 each month. Those extra costs come on top of higher price tags for groceries and other essentials.

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