Change of trustee

bankrupcyrollercoaster

I’m just wondering if anybody could help with a question I have please.

I’m 2 years plus into my bankruptcy situation.
I was discharged after a year but during that time my property, family home & additional property hadn’t been dealt with.

The government OR was handling my case.

My husband at their request made an offer for my share of the 2nd property (no contact made regarding family home from OR yet) this was back at the start of the year.

Friday I received an email from the OR office to say the person originally dealing with my case has left & the new person has taken over however that now the majority of creditors have requested Mazars be appointed as trustee instead.

My question is why would that happen at such a late stage particularly as negations have been ongoing with the OR since the start?

I’ve emailed the new contact back to clarify what’s happening but they are out of the office for a few days so I thought I’d pop the question on here to see if a switch 2 years in is normal & if I should have been made aware that the creditors were having another vote (they had already accepted the OR to deal with it 2 years ago)

Thanks

Minkym00

The new trustee will be a licensed Insolvency Practitioner (most often law firms). They are scratching around for work at the moment. One big law firm is actually dropping IP work altogether shortly. So they may be revisiting old cases and contacting creditors to see if they can get the majority to agree to let be appointed as trustee and deal with your assets. Given that two years down the line your OR hasn’t yet dealt with the assets then you can see why they would happy to pass it on to a law firm.

Also, your creditors didn’t actually vote and decide to leave it with the OR. It’ll be that not enough of them nominated an IP, or not enough nominated the same one.

Come back to us and let know what the OR says.

bankrupcyrollercoaster

Sorry for the delay in getting back.

The OR appeared to be frustrated that they have been removed & confirmed they were about to accept the offer my husband had put forward for the 2nd property, however as soon as the letter came about the creditors requesting a change of trustee they were unable to go ahead with anything relating to my bankruptcy. How true this is I have no idea but it’s what they’ve told me.

Mazar the new trustee have been completely incompetent to date.
First contact with them they started requested income information, any assets purchased since the bankrupcy, PPI forms etc, because I was more than 2 years passed the initial bankruptcy nine if this was relevant & all had been dealt with by OR.

The offer for the property has been submitted 3 times to them now.

The valuation on the family home was disorganised, they changed the appointment 3 times & on the day were 45 minutes late for the appointment.

They have overvalued the property by 25K & refuse to tell us what that is based on. All correspondence is just full of waffle with no questions answered.

They are pushing us into a sale as we can’t afford to buy out my share at the inflated price, the frustrating thing is that if pushed to sell it will go for at least 25K less than they have valued it, if they had valued it correctly initially we could buy out my share. We will end up losing the family home & they will gain nothing more than what they could have got if they valued it correctly.
Even more annoyingly what they get will just cover their costs, nothing for the creditors.

Just thought I’d up date as you took the time in answer my query in August.

Sorry for the rant - just at the end of my tether with Mazars & no idea how to proceed.

Minkym00

The OR has told you the truth. The creditors have the legal right to nominate an IP and so, after 2 years of work was wasted, they probably weren’t best impressed.

When you say “they have overvalued the property”, who do you mean? Presumably they had an independent valuation done? They can’t value it themselves - they’re basically accountants and not estate agents.

Get 3 of your own valuations done and send to them with the argument that pushing for a sale will mean that monies are going to be wasted on estate agents and solicitors fees. It’s in everybody’s interest for your share to be bought out.

If you get nowhere then threaten to complain about their conduct to the Insolvency Service. You can argue that they are not acting in the best interest of the creditors by wasting money on fees.

Link here https://www.gov.uk/complain-about-insolvency-practitioner

bankrupcyrollercoaster

The OR was excellent & I felt very fair & easy to work with so I can understand how annoying it must have been for them, as it is for us.

Yes it was an agent the new trustees used to value the house. We live in a very rural location in a reasonably lower cost area & the agent they sent was a London based agent who had zero knowledge of the local values.

Prior to the agent the trustees chose valuing we’d sent 2 valuations from local
agents for them to compare, these valuations were within 2K of each other & in our opinion a reasonable valuation in line with those obtained 3 years ago which were the figures used on the asset form submitted at the time of my businesses going into liquidation.

I emailed copies of the valuations to the manager handling my case with a request that they pass these to the valuer, when a representative from the valuer got in touch I emailed them copies of the 2 valuations & they again assured me the valuer coming out would be given a copy prior to valuing the property. By this point it was becoming apparent that the left hand didn’t know what the right was doing so I made a copy for the valuer on arrival just in case she hadn’t seen them, which of course she hadn’t!

We’ve written querying the valuation but the answer back was just waffle & didn’t answer the question.

They are also trying to get a payout for the 2 properties in a lump sum which isn’t necessarily going to be possible for us, we need them handled separately so I just feel I’m fighting them at every step of the way at the moment & im exhausted by it all. With the OR I felt they were working with us to get the best possible outcome for all parties, Mazars on the other hand don’t seem to have any common sense, I get the feeling the computer says no & they just keep requesting the same thing over & over even though it’s not achieving anything.

Having never been in or ever imagined being in this situation I have no idea whether this is normal or whether I’ve got unlucky with the way it’s being handled, although judging by my business partners experience with the same company I’d say it’s pretty normal behaviour!

Thanks for the link that’s useful.

Again sorry for the long post. I do appreciate the help & suggestions & tips I’ve picked up from this forum.