Trustee charges and procedures

sav1876

Hi all,

First time poster looking for some advice please.

I’ll give a bit of background.

My father in law has been in poor health in recent years and has struggled with alcoholism. He received a letter from his mortgage lender saying the house was being repossessed due to a large amount of arrears. He decided to sell the house as he had about 30,000 in equity left which would have been enough to see him through to retirement in 3 years time.

A week before the sale went through he received a letter from a Trustee saying he had been made bankrupt back in January. This held up the sale by 6 weeks. It finally went through today.

He phoned the trustee today who informed him it would be months before he received any money. He is currently staying with my wife and I, and was incredibly frustrated at hearing this. He went to citizens advice today with my wife where he was told that the trustees could hold the money for 3 years and that he may not receive any money at all.

We think he would be left with 20,000 after the debt is paid, however we do not know how much the trustee will charge in fees. He has 3 debts in addition to the mortgage lender and estate agent, these are 2 accounts with Lowell and council tax.

Is it possible the trustee charges could wipe this out? Do they have an obligation to pay him anything? Can anyone give a rough indication of how long this could take?

Many thanks,

S

luvchocolate

Hi please bear in mind my B.R was 6 years ago so costs may be more now.
My trustee charged £144.37 per hour....the total cost was £21,047

Flyright

This not only depends on the level of fees charged by the trustees but also how much all the debts add up to as all debts will need to be cleared along with the trustees fees.

xFlake

Hello sav1876,

It depends who is trustee. If it is the OR then there is some certainty over fee's which are just shy of £9,000 plus a percentage of each asset. If it is a private sector IP trustee (basically not the OR) then the fee's will be substantially more. It sounds to me there is a IP trustee in place.

Sorry to bare bad news, but I would estimate from the above figures that there would be likely be nothing left after fee's.

sav1876

Thanks for that folks. He's going into citizens advice next week to see what the best steps forward are. Pretty galling that a disputed £3,000 council tax bill has ended up costing him everything.

Flyright

I'm not sure what Citizens Advice are going to be able to tell him. He is bankrupt and the trustees are realising an asset as they are entitled to do.

sav1876

He's going to see them regarding housing, its quite a complicated situation he is in. We think its probably best speaking to them first to get clarification on a few things before making the next step.

PrettyKittyKat

Did your father in law not realise a petition for his bankruptcy had been made back in January? I would presume he has received contact in the form of letters and calls in the time running up to and after this.

lyncom

Although the OR charge a general fee this is far too high when people can afford to pay the debts in full but not the spiralling costs from the OR for the little amount of work they do. This should be challenged

Flyright

I think you will find that the OR's costs pale in comparison to private sector IP's and in any case the OR's fees are needed when you consider how few bankruptcies have sufficient assets to be able to fund the OR's functions.

lyncom

The OR already receives a fee from the petitioner on the making of a bankruptcy order in the sum of £2775.00 for the performance of his duties so regardless of whether there are assets, the OR receives payment. It is the general fee of £6k that I believe is far too high.