On the 25th November 2009, I, along with my husband were declared bankrupt. I have written my experience to show how I felt and dealt with the situation. I hope this helps someone.
My husband had to liquidate his company in July 2009. That in itself was a tough decision to take. Following the liquidation we knew that we would be left with lots of debt and be totally responsible for it.
After lots of discussions and research, we decided jointly that the only way forward was bankruptcy.
My husband due to his business dealings was fairly relaxed with the situation; I however was initially very worried. What would people say? Where would we live? Would we be able to survive this? Would our two teenage children suffer?
My husband found a great website called ‘Piggy bankrupt’. This was the start to feeling better, although the unknown of where we would live was at the forefront of my mind. We emailed the Piggy website and a really nice guy who created the site contacted us (a bankrupt himself). He spoke at length and then said he would get a lady called Ann Marie to ring us.
Ann Marie spoke at length to my husband and then she phoned me at home and I asked questions that were on my mind. What will happen to my family allowance and tax credits? What do I say when creditors phone us? What would happen to our house? Will they come and see what we have in it? Would they want items that belonged to our children? What do I do about my bank account?
Ann Marie cleared up my questions, but then I found I had others, but she was always at the end of a phone or we emailed her our questions and then she either emailed or phoned back and it didn’t matter how trivia my questions were. So things were starting to feel better. Having someone who knows really helped.
We looked for properties to rent and we were honest to the landlord about the bankruptcy. We soon found ourselves a lovely house and moved in. We then gave the keys back to the mortgage company. My first worry over. Everything after that started to fall into place.
The bankruptcy itself was painless. Our forms (which Ann Marie did for us) were checked with us, in a small room and we swore on oath. The forms were taken to the judge and he asked to see us. We were in there 2 minutes. He asked us if we had looked into an IVA. We said we had and on advice it wasn’t for us. So he granted our bankruptcy. We then went back to the small room where we then spoke to the official receiver by phone. They just asked us basic questions which were easy to answer, like, which are your banks, account numbers, about our vehicles etc. We will have to work with the official receiver over the next few months.
We are waiting to have an interview with the official receiver, this is something I am not looking forward to, as I don’t know how far they look into things, but as my husband as said “the worst is over, they can’t lock you up for spending at BHS last year”. We have had to fill in some forms and provide bank, credit card and loan information. They have informed our banks who have shut our accounts down.
My life had changed and I realised that I had to change with it, or I would never be able to move forward! I am feeling relieved and actually feeling excited about our future.
