First of all they have to know - or suspect - that you have a car. They then have to find out the Reg number. I'm sure you will be ringing them asap to tell them this information ... or maybe not.

Here are the details from the Consumer Credit Register held by the OFT - these details are from the OFT website. The really interesting bit is the 'historic names' section. Application / Licence Details Licence Number:0584761 Licence Status:Current Current Applicant / Licensee: Business NameCompany Registration Number Apex Credit Management Limited3967099 Categories: Consumer credit Credit brokerage Credit reference agency Debt collecting Provision of debt-adjusting on a commercial basis Provision of debt-counselling on a commercial basis Right To Canvass Off Trade Premises:No Trading Name(s) (Current): Apex Apex Credit Management Apex Discovery Solutions Trading Name(s) (Historic): Buchana Clark & Wells The Telegram Bureau BCW Buchanan Clark & Wells BCW Group Buchanan Clark Wells Issued Date: 29-Jun-2006 Expiry Date: 28-Jun-2011 Legal Formation: Body Corporate (incorporated inside UK) Current Individuals that run the organisation: NamePosition Bryan MouatOFFICER Neil Clyne Peter Cartwright Stephen MoundCheif operating officer Historic Individuals that run the organisation: NamePosition Andrew McCormickOFFICER Jarlath James McHaleOFFICER Paul FraserOFFICER Nature of Business: Credit Brokers Current Address(es): Address TypeAddress CorrespondenceApex House, 27, Arden Street, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, Warwickshire, CV37 6NW, United Kingdom Principal Place Of BusinessApex House, 27, Arden Street, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, Warwickshire, CV37 6NW, United Kingdom Registered OfficeApex House, 27, Arden Street, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, Warwickshire, CV37 6NW, United Kingdom Historic Address(es): Address TypeAddress Correspondence11 Elm Court, Arden Street, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, Warwickshire, CV37 6PA, United Kingdom CorrespondenceElm Court, 11, Arden Street, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, Warwickshire, CV37 6PA, United Kingdom Principal Place Of Business11 Elm Court, Arden Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, CV37 6PA Principal Place Of Business11 Elm Court, Arden Street, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, Warwickshire, CV37 6PA, United Kingdom Principal Place Of BusinessElm Court, 11, Arden Street, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, Warwickshire, CV37 6PA, United Kingdom Registered Office11 Elm Court, Arden Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, CV37 6PA Registered OfficeElm Court, 11, Arden Street, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, Warwickshire, CV37 6PA, United Kingdom

There certainly is! Go back up a level to the forum list and look for the 'Formal Solutions ...' forum

Err, how about the 'Formal Solutions ...' forum which deals with bankruptcy

One small point for reference : Alliance & Leicester credit cards were administered by MBNA - it was always only MBNA that you dealt (even if they used A&L stationery).

How close are you to the court? It helps to go there in person if at all feasible. As someone has mentioned above I expect you will need to fill in another form and submit. I have no idea if you have to pay another fee but it wouldn't surprise me if you did. Why the person who wrote to you didn't mention this course of action is beyond me. One other point : if you really want to wake MBNA up then apply to have their banking certificate revoked. If that happened they would be out of business at a stroke, although the chances of this actually happening in your case are zilch (remember BCCI). It will, however, cause a certain amount of consternation.

Since you are disputing the enforceability of the debt you have a perfectly good reason to apply for a set aside.

When did all this happen? The wheels of justice sometimes very slowly.

To answer some of the points you raise - - the envelope will have been delivered by a process server who will swear an affidavit as to when he delivered the envelope. Remeber that the important date is the date it was served on you, not the date of the SD itself, although the process server will almost certainly say differently. - in the case of a SD you must try to call the person named on the SD. If that person is not contactable then you have a good reason to have the SD set aside. - the £510 cost is for a debtor's petition (you are petitioning for your own bankruptcy), not a creditor's petition. - there's no point in you marketing the property now - let the OR do the hard work. Besides prices might even have gone up by the time that happens! - if you write to Connaught then do it as a formal complaint, and mention that you require a formal response as it is your intention to lodge a complaint about their behaviour with the OFT. - an 'embarassed defence' doesn't apply to a set aside. You are the one making the application : you are not the defendant. The grounds for having the SD set aside are very well defined [maybe someone else here can post these as I don't have them to hand]. The points you raise don't carry any weight at all - either the debt has been repaid or is disputed, or there are procedural irregularities. Remember that the SD hasn't been near a court yet so you have to prove everything : have you disputed the debt in any way at all? - I'm always in favour of a negotiated settlement, however you need to be prepared for the negotiations to fail. In particular you must have your last line of defence well defined so that if it is crossed then you will say 'No' and mean it. The other side will always have that little bit of persuasion which might just edge you over the line so you have to be in a position to recognise this and stop at that point.

MrShed - I agree it is ambiguously worded (and I went the wrong way). If the OP signed in his personal capacity then his own, single signature fulfils the requirements. I believe this is the situation here. Alternatively the guarantor could be a limited company (guaranteeing the loan to another limited company) in which the two-signatures part applies. Hence we now need to ask where the OP signed the form : presumably as an individual guarantor.

While it is clear that you had an account with RBS any enforcement rights are contained within the agreement. If there is no agreement then repayments are not enforceable. RBS solicitors have recognised this (but probably won't admit to it in public). So, the ball is in your court. Negotiate if you will but the lie of the land is very much in your favour. As for a Tomlin Order I would regard this with the same enthusiasm as sticking your head down the toilet - with extreme reluctance and only if you are forced to do so.

I haven't read your other thread, however I would send a special delivery letter giving them 28 days to comply or you will take legal steps to enforce the contract. You have a contract - make sure it is enforced in the same way that they would if, for some reason, you defaulted in your obligations. You could even send a Default Notice.

Most of these are probably people in a similar situation yourself yourself. Others may have looked in and found they cannot contribute to you specific issues. Remember the vast majority of people on CAG started off by being in straitened circumstances and came looking for help. A few of these have stayed on to help others as best they. Unfortunately CAG doesn't have any resident legal experts (although a few ordinary Caggers have some technical and legal training) - it is a mutual help affair. I cannot help much other than to point you at the government's insolvency website where there is much useful information and more definitive answers to your question - http://www.insolvency.gov.uk.

Sorry to hear about your difficulties. Most of us here have been through rough times and can sympathise with you. Firstly, a Statutory Demand is the necessary legal preliminary to lodging a creditors petition for bankruptcy. It is served directly on the creditor by the debtor and does not go near a court. This is why the issue of service (delivery the SD to the debtor is so important). Often this is done using a process server, anindependent person who will be able to swear and affidavit that the SD was delivered. However sometimes the creditor will simply post the SD to the debtor : normal postage is a not a provable form of delivery of course. Recorded delivery or even special delivery is. How was your SD delivered? To answer your questions - 1. They have started the legal process but not court proceedings. 2. see below 3. It is not possible to give a timescale. Once the SD exists and has not been set aside then the creditor can lodge a bankruptcy petition at any time of their choosing - or not all. It is their decision entirely. Remember that the matter hasn't reached court yet. 4. If you are declared bankrupt then the Official Receiver takes over all your assets and your unsecured debts. You don't pay anything, the OR does. All creditors are paid pro rata according to the value of the debt. 5. If there is no equity in the property then the OR would not be interested in it. Your secured creditors will be but that's a separate issue from any administration of bankruptcy. 6. No it's not too late but I can't offer any comment on this as I have no experience of it. 7. see below Let's return to the Statutory Demand. Is the exact date of delivery provable? What you can do is to have the SD set aside - for which you do have to go to court. You must do this within 18 days of receipt of the SD and there are several grounds on which you can apply. a) the debt no longer exists or is disputed in some way - this is the most common ground b) you cannot contact the person named on the SD (you must try to do so) c) there are other, technical grounds which are unlikely to apply in your case Finally, it is worth noting that it costs a creditor a significant sum of money (around £1600 I believe) to lodge a creditor's petition for bankruptcy. Bearing in mind that the all creditors are paid out in proportion it is unlikely that any one creditor will get all the money owed to them back. Often they will get nothing and then be out of pocket by the amount of the court fees. This doesn't mean they won't proceed with a creditor's petition but it doesn't happen as often as you might think. I strongly suspect that the creditor in question is aware of the mortgage but of not of the other secured debts, and hence believes there is sufficient equity for them to recoup their money. But, as I mentioned above, there is some confusion over the bankruptcy and secured debts. The debt to this creditor is not secured and will therefore be included in any bankruptcy. But they cannot force the sale of the property (only secured creditors could do this) as only the OR can do take such actions - and then he will only bother doing so if there is any equity in the property. If, after all debts to the secured creditors are taken into account, there is still some equity in the property then the OR might want to have the property sold so that the free equity can be used to pay creditors. This is a complex matter and needs to be discussed in a lot of detail. I suspect that the creditor may have done his homework but not very well : he is probably expecting that some the secured debts aren't, which would have the effect of raising the funds available because the free equity would increase. These are pretty generalised comments and much depends on your personal circumstances. It is good that you have contacted CCCS. You should also contact National Debtline and also read through the various documents on the government's Insolvency website - http://www.insolvency.gov.uk where there is much useful information. There are probably lots of questions you wish to raise - feel free to do so.

I would be a little cautious about telling the solicitors to go away. The wording of the guarantee might allow it to be used with any loan or credit agreement - as you have said yourself it doesn't have an agreement number on it. In any case you have not said that the guarantee was discharged when the first loan was paid off. If you have signed the guarantee as the guarantor then there must be two other signatures on the document which must both be directors because you were the Company Secretary and you can't sign as both Guarantor and CS. If you did then you have unwittingly dug a big hole for yourself. In response to MrShed's point : it is quite common for banks and other financial institutions to require a personal guarantee when lending money. In business situations it is also quite common for the creditor to be very hard-nosed about enforcing the guarantee.

I've not been declared bankrupt so have no experience to speak from. In the absence of other comments I'll perhaps add some. However I would listen to your solicitor and perhaps discuss the matter with him in more detail. Bankruptcy is not meant to be a cake-walk. You owe more than then you can pay and the law obliges you to pay as much as you can. Some of the items you mention are deemed as luxuries, others are marginal while payments to relations are almost certainly not permissable. This is because these are debts which you are paying off at the expense of other creditors. The issue of the creditors being relatives is irrelevant. The Official Receiver will want you to pay that money to him so he can pay it out pro rata to all creditors. Those people will of course become creditors and will (eventually) get a percentage of the amount owed. As for the Next Directory, presumably you are paying this because your wife has no income of her own. Unfortunately because the account is in her name it is not included in your bankruptcy. On the other hand because you will be bankrupt you can't make the payments yourself as that money will be taken by the OR. Bit of a catch-22 here which you need to resolve with the solicitor. Bear in mind that the OR will allow you reasonable living expenses. This might include the children's sports club. Your solicitor has raised this as non-essential however there might be a case for this being allowed. Depends on the OR. hth

I would endorse the comments above about getting some good legal advice. The major issues are - 1. The CCJ which you were not made aware of. 2. The interim charging order which prevents you disposing of your property until it is either dropped or made final. 3. Whether by coincidence or by design an unsecured debt is being converted into a secured one. And this is happening just prior to a petition for your bankruptcy - which means primie facie that it won't be included in your bankruptcy [if the petition is successful and there is no evidence to suppose it won't be]. You have been caught in a particularly nasty trap I'm afraid. Which is why you need some good legal advice. You should mention the interim charging order in some detail to the judge at your bankruptcy hearing and ask for a ruling on whether it can be included.

Mr Carter, being a solicitor, is congenitally unable to admit that he has made a mistake. Hence the lack of any response. It also likely that Phoenix is not responding to him so he is caught in the middle like a rabbit on the highway. Tee hee.

If your partner is being pursued then she must make the request. Use cashins comments above as a guide. In essence, if you took out the loan/whatever jointly then your agreement will allow the creditor to pursue either of you for the total debt (or such part of this as the other doesn't pay). Was this debt included in your bankruptcy? Perhaps you should discuss this situation in detail with the OR/trustee.

Good point. But this relies on there being a clause that they can make these charges. The penalty nature of any such charges is a corollary - but highly important as you point out. On the other hand if there is no provision for 'admin' charges in the agreement then they can't be charged at all. Hence the necessity for examining the agreement.

Actually I've just realised I've misread this. You can have someone accompany your sister but your sister will have to be present. If she does not want to be present then she will need to engage a legally qualified person such as a solicitor or barrister to represent her. Solicitors and barristers do not come cheap. What is it precisely that your sister is afraid of? Is she self-conscious or afraid of being ridiculed? Is she afraid of being imprisoned (she definitely won't be)? Is it just fear of the unknown? Could I suggest that she attends the court a few times as a member of the public simply to see what happens. Just sit in the public gallery and watch what happens in other cases.

I have a rather jaundiced view of the Data Protection Act. To be charitable it creates the Office of the Information Commissioner which ensures that a large number of civil servants have employment.

Aah, there's no mileage in the statute-barred route then!

themagcian, thank you for your kind thoughts. I'm not conceited and pompous, merely pedantic. As you have testified yourself being precise and correct (pedantic) wins in the end. My comment was intended as a compliment. I had and have no intention of 'bothering' anyone, least of all yourself. Perhaps you are of a frame of mind where you react at the slightest perceived criticism. I used to do that a lot - and still do sometimes even now. As for your case from my personal experience you may find you have won a battle but the war will continue. I would humbly suggest you keep everything ready just in case.

It depends on your agreement - which is why obtaining a copy in order to check this is so important