Help. Threatening to make me bankrupt

jojog68

Help please. A commercial landlord is threatening to make me bankrupt for rent owed. I wanted out of the lease and the landlord (not officially) agreed that one of the other tenants could take on the lease. This was almost a year ago. After waiting for it to go through for about 6 months I left the property as I no longer had any stock and the new tenant was ready to take over. He has been in the property all this time and has taken on new tenants and sub letters who he is receiving rent from ( the new tenant not the landlord)
He has agreed new terms with the new tenant and took a deposit off him but no rent yet. Does anyone know where I stand?

Mouse007

Your starting point is the lease. What does it say about giving notice or termination?

Secondly were your rent payments upto date when you left?

Then consider how much do you potentially owe against the cost to the landlord of making you bankrupt. Do you have any assets (or a job) to protect? It could be that the landlord will gain nothing except further losses (costs) by taking such action.

TheGardener

The landlord sounds like he's trying to pressure you as making you BR will cost him quite a lot of money.

I would contact Business debt line for some free professional advise on this one.

london1973

i would agree, bankruptcy is an oft used scare tactic, it talkes time effort and is costly however
what are the sums involved? to mouse’s point you need to check the terms of the lease-if its an assignment from you to the new tenant then technically you are ultimately liable for the rent- but can’ really advise further until you provide the requested details

ACG

It will come down to the lease as stated for what you owe.
However, someone can not just declare you bankrupt. They would need to take it to court, win and then start bankruptcy proceedings as far a I am aware. It is not a quick process and you will have many opportunities to stop the going bankrupt (assuming you can find the money) before it actually happens - I am sure someone can confirm that however.

If you owe a grand, the landlord is unlikely to go through all of that as he would have to throw good money after potentially bad.

If you owe £20k then he is more likely to.

london1973

He would have to serve a statutory demand, then assuming you don't pay, apply for a court date to make-you bankrupt-which could take months,

in short you are likely to be many months away and have plenty of time to avert, if you wish to

debt_doctor

Hi,
See what the lease says, but in any event you would claim that any new lease holder is mitigating your liability by their payments.


Once you have established what you owe then firstly is it more than £5k? The landlord can't petition for your BR unless you owe at least £5k.


First step of BR is the issuing of a Statutory Demand. This is simply a piece of paper downloaded from the internet and has not been near any court at this stage. They are sometimes used as a bluff when there is no intention to make you BR.


You have 18 days to 'set aside' the SD (if you wish) and after the 21 st day, if not set aside, the LL could pay to issue a creditors petition. At the creditors petition stage you will know if they are serious or not as they will have at this point paid about £2k to issue the petition.


You can use all of the defences against a petition at the Creditors petition stage that you could have done at the SD stage, so non response to a SD does not mean you are prejudiced from defending later.


DD

Marktheshark

Did you get anything in writing ?
If not, then you have been bitten by a big dog in a dog eat dog business world.