At Abacus, we regularly act on behalf of bankrupt clients in assisting them in annulling their bankruptcy.
The most common ground which we are asked to base an annulment application on is the ground under s.282(1)(b) of the Insolvency Act 1986 i.e. payment of all the debts and expenses of the bankruptcy in full.
We have previously acted on behalf of individuals ranging from professionals to business owners in seeking that their bankruptcy is annulled and therefore completely removed from their record.
One such case is where we were instructed by a publican who became bankrupt due to a debt to HMRC. HMRC are known to be extremely aggressive in recovering monies due and unfortunately although our client was making efforts to repay the debt, HMRC continued to make him bankrupt.
Once you are made bankrupt your assets vest within the Official Receiver or a Trustee in Bankruptcy. If you own a business then this can have serious effects upon the same as the Trustee is extremely unlikely to continue your business on your behalf, and take over both the responsibilities and potential liabilities of running the same.
The Trustee was therefore threatening to close our clients business. After discussing the matter with our client it became clear that he could raise the funds within a very short period of time to repay all the bankruptcy debts and expenses. The clients’ sole focus now was on his business and, as this was his livelihood and only source of income, ensuring that this survives.
Most applications to annul a bankruptcy are prepared and listed for a hearing from 3 months onwards however the trustee informed us that they were only willing to continue to allow the pub to trade for a period of 14 days with the caveat that any application for annulment had to be made within 7 days.
We therefore immediately made an urgent application to Court to annul the bankruptcy and arranged for our client to transfer the necessary funds in order to repay all the debts and expenses.
We prepared all the evidence and set out our client’s case and obtained both a hearing and an order within the two week deadline imposed by the Trustee. Our client recovered his business, paid all his debts and the bankruptcy was completely removed from his record.
If you need help in annulling a bankruptcy, contact Hannah Vachre on 0161 833 0044 or email h.vachre@abacus-law.co.uk