Personal insolvency comes with unique challenges as the assets of an individual are at stake, often including a family home, business assets and/or investments. Our personal insolvency specialists understand the impact of financial distress on all those involved, including the debtor, their family and creditors who may have relied on the debtor to pay a personal debt.
The decision on whether a formal or informal personal insolvency process is taken, will often bring debtors and creditors into conflict. Whether we are advising you as the debtor or the creditor, we see a key part of our role being the development of a strategy that addresses such conflicts. We are candid about which option will achieve your aims and strive to make you understand how each solution will impact each stakeholder.
Bankruptcy is the most widely recognised solution for individuals in debt as it is, in many ways, the most traditional. Our personal insolvency specialists approach the task both flexibly and innovatively, using our many years of experience in generating favourable returns for creditors to help us.
We are able to assist you if, as creditors, you have failed to find an alternative solution for the recovery of your debts. Working with you in the lead up to bankruptcy, we ensure that the approach is suitable to you. We work with our forensic colleagues to identify assets and investigations before as well as after the bankruptcy order is made, ensuring that bankruptcy is not a waste of your time and money.
Our Personal Insolvency specialists are also able to act as Trustee in bankruptcy proceedings with vast experience in realising all forms of assets including simple, complex, unusual and those assets whose ownership is in dispute. We are experienced and tenacious in investigating all manner of schemes for putting assets beyond the reach of creditors and in one case, found ourselves going back 20 years to overturn an antecedent transaction; the transfer of a house to a spouse. We offer innovative solutions not just to identify and realising assets for creditors, but also in terms of how best to fund such actions, including our remuneration. Our experience of dealing with bankruptcy estates can be used in debt advisory where, when appropriate, we can assist a bankrupt or their family in negotiations with a Trustee in bankruptcy.
Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) offer the most flexible approach and are ideal when all stakeholders want to work together to find a solution. IVAs are more challenging when there is little trust between parties, which is why we look to build trust when assessing the appropriateness of an IVA, in comparison to the less formal debt advisory approach. Whilst our knowledge of what would happen in the most contentious insolvency can assist in those negotiations, often, we find that our understanding of people and agendas is as important as our technical knowledge. Once we have successfully negotiated a deal that works for all parties involved, we act as Nominee to guide the implementation of the solution and as Supervisor to minimise the chances of anything going wrong. We firmly believe that a well-planned approach is the most likely to succeed.
Our personal insolvency specialists provide advice on a variety of different-sized cases; from the smallest disputes to the largest. With respect to the former, we recently assisted a spouse to reach a settlement of £12,000 with her husband’s Trustee in bankruptcy. Conversely, we are currently advising on an IVA with debts of £20 million and dealing with a bankruptcy with assets in excess of £5 million.
