OR notifying Landlord of bankruptcy

hamsandwich26

Hi everyone,

My partner was made bankrupt at the beginning of this month. We rent privately in an assured shorthold tenancy. We received a letter today with our address but our Landlords name, which I only realised after opening and reading it. The letter was notifying our LL of my partners bankruptcy and requesting a copy of the tenancy agreement, any rent arrears etc.

We have lived here for almost 6 years and are not and have never been in rent arrears. As far as I have been able to ascertain from my searches on the internet, the OR should not have done this as our Landlord is not a creditor. My partner hasn't even had his interview yet, and was only sent a copy of the SOA a few days ago. The OR is also on holiday until the 29th, so we have no way of contacting her to try to understand why she's done this. 

My question is, is this normal or a sign that we might be in for a difficult ride with this particular OR?
I am absolutely beside myself. We have 2 small children and one on the way and all of this has been a huge shock to me as I was not aware of the extent of his debts, which is totally my own fault. We are reliant on him financially and I am deeply concerned that we will now be evicted from our home with a baby due in November.

Thanks in advance for any help.

la531983

Is it the only address they have written to? Did you provide the address of an estate agent.

I mean, I really shouldnt suggest you write back pretending to be the landlord, with a copy of the agreement and stating there are no arrears. But that is probably naughty. Nudge nudge wink wink.

They are generally far too busy to be delving into everything, this has likely just been done as a matter of course. Unless the debts total something ridiculously high you wont be paid too much attention to.

luvchocolate

It seems the examiner has jumped ahead 
I had a face to face and had to produce my tenancy agreement and was assured because there were no  arrears my landlord would not be notified.

hamsandwich26

la531983 said:

Is it the only address they have written to? Did you provide the address of an estate agent.

I mean, I really shouldnt suggest you write back pretending to be the landlord, with a copy of the agreement and stating there are no arrears. But that is probably naughty. Nudge nudge wink wink.

They are generally far too busy to be delving into everything, this has likely just been done as a matter of course. Unless the debts total something ridiculously high you wont be paid too much attention to.

Ha! I'm not daring enough to do that in case we got caught. I'm not sure if it's been sent elsewhere. There's nothing on the letter to indicate if they've sent it to another address. I'm not sure how the OR didn't notice that the address they'd used matched that of the property we rent tbh. 

His debt is quite high from what he's told me so far 😣. 

hamsandwich26

luvchocolate said:

It seems the examiner has jumped ahead 
I had a face to face and had to produce my tenancy agreement and was assured because there were no  arrears my landlord would not be notified.

That's what I'd read was typical. It even states outright on one of the debt advice websites that the Landlord only knows about the bankruptcy if there are rent arrears. I'm really peeved that the OR has done it this way round.

RAS

Your husband needs to tell you how much he owes, to within £5k at least. 

And preciselymhow he got into this much debt?

If you look up the Local Housing Allowance, how much is your rent by comparison? Not suggesting you live in a property with that rental value but if it's very expensive maybe the OR has a view.

Presumably you've got the tenancy agreement, and evidence from bank statements of the payments? 

I presume you agreed the household budget with him before your husband submitted it to the OR? 

I'm hoping you don't have any joint debts or accounts with him? As that could wreck your credit record as well as his.

hamsandwich26

RAS said:

Your husband needs to tell you how much he owes, to within £5k at least. 

And preciselymhow he got into this much debt?

If you look up the Local Housing Allowance, how much is your rent by comparison? Not suggesting you live in a property with that rental value but if it's very expensive maybe the OR has a view.

Presumably you've got the tenancy agreement, and evidence from bank statements of the payments? 

I presume you agreed the household budget with him before your husband submitted it to the OR? 

I'm hoping you don't have any joint debts or accounts with him? As that could wreck your credit record as well as his.

He doesn't know exactly, but it's over £100,000 from what I've seen. It's mostly tax debt unfortunately. He said it started when his income was very up and down and he basically just buried his head in the sand. I don't want to go into how dumb that is/was. I'm still reeling from all of this being dropped on me and I'm just looking to safeguard our children as much as possible. 

Our rent is very reasonable for a 3 bed semi with garage and parking. We pay £950 p/m. We'd be paying at least £400 more for an equivalent property anywhere else, or even more.

Yes we have the tenancy agreement and bank statements to show we are up to date.

That's the thing, we haven't even done the budget yet. She only sent it over to us on Friday of last week and is now, according to her automated email response, on leave until the 29th. 

RAS

So put together your budget, urgently.

Pull together your recent statements. Work out your average monthly payments on all the categories. Then look at annual expenditure like insurance and medical and dental. How much?

Holidays going forward are going to be camping, house swaps. 

And your husband needs to explain the HMRC debt, and explain why he didn't sort it as it accrued.

MyWorldIsOver

Ohh this is worrying.. I was also led to believe that the OR wouldn't contact your landlord unless you were in arrears!

la531983

MyWorldIsOver said:

Ohh this is worrying.. I was also led to believe that the OR wouldn't contact your landlord unless you were in arrears!

In which case the OP (well, her husband) needs to make a complaint then. 

kevker23

I also read they wouldn't be contacted. When I had my face to face, the OR said they would be contacting my landlord. I did query this and she said they had people in the past falsifying tenancy agreements to avoid IPAs etc. I was never in arrears and had a good relationship with my landlord, so wasn't an issue for me.