In my experience at the official receivers office the biggest number of prosecutions is for lying to the official receiver and court rather than for the original handling of the monies that are unaccounted for. Most offences in bankruptcy such as gambling or disposing of assets etc are dealt with via civil courts and the bankruptcy restriction measures these days. So the best way forward is almost always to be truthful what ever was the original offence your mothers sister was trying to cover up. It is best to limit the damage and fess up now. They already realize there is money missing from the equation and that is why they are asking these questions. do you think they are just going to stop without proof? They wont,if they have not already they will interview your mothers sister at the office and write down every word she says. she will have to sign that document right under a big paragraph which explains that lying in that document is an offence under the perjury act punishable by up to 2 years in prison. If they are still suspicious then they will call in the BIS inspectors who will come to the office and interview her under caution. is she going to maintain the same lie then? What about when they start the prosecution and she has to repeat the same details in court in front of the judge. honesty really is the best option regardless of what they are trying their hardest to cover up

well assuming that the judge rules against you then all that does is show that there is a debt. The solicitors can then use any of the usual debt collection techniques from simply coming to an arrangement to pay in installments which should be the first thing they offer up to and including charging orders, repossession and bankruptcy itself. but as stated like with any debt they should allow a reasonable repayment plan in the first instance.

you keep saying but he did not intend to go bankrupt, that does not matter. what matters is that he was insolvent and he paid one creditor some money and not the others. Also forget about the secured creditors as they were not known at the time. You said he had unsecured creditors of 20K. So for definite he owed you and he owed 20K to other creditors at least. He got the redundancy money and paid you and not them. Now the judge is going to ask him, why did he do that, how is that not intending to to put you in a better position than them. That is what he needs to answer if he wants to rely on that defense. Ill try and give an example of how that defense could be used. Say he owed you and some unsecured creditors, you have no arrangement to pay you back in installments just when he has the money. For his other creditors he does have monthly payments which he is up to date with. Now he comes into some money and pays you back in full but crucially he is still keeping up all his payments to his creditors on time. Later on he loses his job and goes bankrupt. Now in that situation you got all your money back and they didnt but crucially at the point he paid you he was paying them everything he was obliged to (up to gate with monthly payments) he had spare money and paid you so he was not intending to put you in a better position as he was happily paying them and would have done so if things had not changed. Thats just one example but you can see how it differs from your situation where he was presumably not up to date with his other creditors so in that case the judge thinks why did he pay you and not them

Unfortunately they are correct, the law does does not depend on whether he knew he was insolvent or not. Just whether he was actually insolvent or not which is is tested by the 2 tests i mentioned above. lets assume that he was insolvent as you seem to be admitting that with what you have said so far. There is another defense but it is much more difficult to prove as it is a matter or opinion rather than fact like the defense above. The second defense is whether or not he had a desire to put you in a better position than if he had not made the payment to you. As you are an associate of his in law it is presumed he did have a desire to put you in a better position unless you can prove otherwise. This is difficult and the question must be asked,when he had the money from his redundancy why did he pay it to you rather than splitting it between all of his creditors including you

If you dont accept the very basic principle of the law, which is that an insolvent person should not give a preference to one of his creditors over the others, then it is going to be difficult to offer any answer that will satisfy you. As i was trying to get at the easiest defense would to prove that he was not insolvent at the time. i dont know all of his circumstances so it is impossible for me to know if this defense is available to him. ut that is the first thing to try and establish the facts on.

ok so forget about the secured debts for a minute as that was unknown at the time. Lets look at the unsecured debts for now. it seems that he owed you at least £20K (probably more) and he also owed other unsecured creditors at least £20k at the point he got the redundancy money. One of the questions the court will look at is was he insolvent at the time. You keep saying that he had not thought about bankruptcy yet. That does not matter for the first test. The test is, was he insolvent. Now there are 2 definitions for insolvency. the first is this. Were his assets less than his debts.Now unless his house was sold for more than £110,000 (the £70,000 shortfall plus £20k to you plus £20k other unsecured creditors) less than the market value then this measure would seem to point to insolvency. That may be something you want to check out. what was the expected market value of the property and what did it sell for. The second definition is can he pay his debts as they fall due. Now normally this means the normal monthly payments to his creditors. But when you miss payments and default the whole of those debts become due immediately so at that stage he would almost certainly be insolvent on that count. That is why it is important to know if he was up to date with his payments to creditors at the point he paid you. If you want to checkout the law look up the insolvency act 1986 and look at section 340, that is what covers preferences. Finally forget about who is going to what if the money is recovered. it is either a preference or not and that is determined by the facts of the case and if it is a preference then the trustee is entitled to recover those monies.

Sorry, i have sympathy for you, but if you dont answer the questions i have asked then there is little anyone can do to help. If you go into a court case and just say "i dont see why the can do this" then you are going to lose. you need to know the exact, and i mean exact, circumstances of what he owed, what his assets were and how he was paying those debts when the money was paid back to you.

To give you a proper answer you need to answer the questions the questions that i asked, as i asked them.

There is no point going round in circles on this what is sorely lacking in all this is any facts. What we actually need to know is this at the point that the 20K was paid back what exact debts did he have (whether big or small), Were all of the current payments on these up to date. Had there been any defaults. if the only debts were secured were they up to date, was there their sufficient security to cover those debts, if so why was there a shortfall 6 months later. what changed in that period.

Hi Uncle, bankruptcies are actually at a 10 year low If you want to check out the official statistics they are in this link http://www.insolvencydirect.bis.gov.uk/otherinformation/statistics/201311/index.htm

yes particularly interesting are the failure rates as commentated on in the above link "Between the years 1990 and 2002, inclusive, the percentage of IVAs registered that resulted in termination remained fairly steady at around the 30% mark (the lowest figure in this period being 28% for 2001 registrations and the highest 33% for 1995 registrations). The percentage of terminations has since followed a generally upward trend from 30% for 2002 to the level for 2007 registrations, which currently stands at 37%. As at September 2012, nearly 50% of IVA registrations in 2007 were still ongoing (Table 1 below), so this figure is likely to increase going forward; for the most recent years a trend has not yet emerged as a high percentage of IVAs are still ongoing (as shown below, 2004 is the final year where the final status is known for over 95% of registrations)" thoughts on why? my guess would be the commercialisation of the market, you know all those wipe 75% of your debt out adverts I think people believed the hype and moved from thinking about bankruptcy to thinking about IVA's instead. often 3 years in when they lost their income they then come to understand it is not as advertised

yep well that will be it for the moment, if they have sent you a letter saying no inyerview then they will just progress the case in the background and let you know when decisions are made (like the car). You only need to contact them if you have new information such as if you get a windfall or a change in your circumstances

Ok start by looking at and telling us what letters you have had so far

hi, just to add to what sequenci has said, when deciding what to do you probably need to look at what your income prospects are ,will you be looking to go back to work? IE you need to look at whether you need a permenant solution or simply a short term solution to tide you over

one of the key things you need to ask them is if they have equity in their property

In my opinion

i think that is a bit of a miss read wintry, This will be for the contract moonbeever currently has, it is not necessarily about none payers, most of the work is simply administering the IPA accounts which basically is just taking he money in and recording payments, it is mainly admin, There is a small amount of much more complicated work which may include court action

The only time you would not be discharged after 12 months is if you have refused to cooperate with the official receiver

100 %

not trying to give them nightmares, just the other poster Firefox asked what they were and it is necessary in explaining what they are to put them in context with the range of outcomes as we dont know what firefox is asking in relation to. just to be clear £500 would never end up in a criminal prosecution as it is below the threshold to submit a case

It should also be noted that a BRO/BRU is simply the first in the line of penalties that can be imposed, for very serious bad behaviour criminal proceedings can be brought as well which is punishable by fines and imprisonment

a BRO/U is extra restrictions that can be placed on a bankrupt for up to 15 years

as to your initial question, the maximum penalty for non disclosure of assets (presuming it would have been an asset in the first place) is imprisonment, so it is not something i would suggest. As to whether it would be an asset would depend on whether you were discharged on the datre the redundancy became effective, so the obvious question is are you discharged, if not how far through the bankruptcy are you and when is the redundancy date likely to be

As ABC says the general amount (presuming that they agreed that you need a car) nowdays is £1000, but everycase is different as everyones circumstances are different. The Official answer is that they will allow a car if it is deemed necessary and the value of the car is appropriate to the use it is necessary for

The supervisor of your IVA