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Can you take a recently discharged bankrupt to small court

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  • Can you take a recently discharged bankrupt to small court

    hi all
    looking for advice on a matter if possible, I'll give a brief overview of what has been an absolute nightmare.

    a few years ago my father in law past away without leaving a will, he had a girlfriend living with him at the time.
    he had made it very clear to anyone that would listen that his home was to go to his kids as most of us would want and the girlfriend always made a point of agreeing.

    there were debts and a mortgage attached to the property so after a while a conversation was had between my wife and the girlfriend whereby it was said that she was welcome to stay in the house but would have to pay rent to cover the mortgage etc, something she had never done, although she has a good job as a ward sister she'd never contributed anything other than what you would expect to pay to live, food etc.

    unfortunatley that wasn't good enough so the next offer was to buy the place at a really knocked down price to clear the debt, again not good enough so I'm sure by now you know where this is going, yep she made a beneficial interest claim on the house.

    So after two years going back and forth bending over backwards to help this woman we end up with a three day trial to decide what happens.

    as expected she lost her claim, turns out that buying cushions and pots and pans doesn't give you a beneficial interest in a property.
    by this point we've spent £70000 on legal fees and mortgage payments because she was still in the house.

    she was ordered by the judge to pay our fees but surprise surprise she declared herself bankrupt giving us no chance of getting our money back, money we'd had to remortgage our house to pay
    she was discharged from bankruptcy in march this year which is unbelievable.
    anyway to get to my point, when we finally got her out of the house we found that she had trashed the place and stolen stuff the house needed, along with leaving 4 skips worth of rubbish to get rid of, in total to put these things right it cost us another £4000

    so my question is if anyone can help is can I take this woman to the small claims court to recover the £4000? It's nothing compared to what we have lost but still a lot of money.
    she does still work so I think it's only right she pays but don't know the legal side regarding her bankruptcy

    many thanks in in advance for any advice

    reg
    Tags: None

  • #2
    Re: Can you take a recently discharged bankrupt to small court

    Has a formal claI'm been made? If the claim was made after the discharge then a new claim can be made. You will need to goppose through the formal process of making a claim. I'm sure that more knowledgeable members of the forum will be along shortly.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Can you take a recently discharged bankrupt to small court

      bankruptcy works backwards, it wipes out all your debt you had up to the point of being declared bankrupt. Any debt incurred after that day is the responsibility of the individual. So i would say yes you can.

      dave

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      • #4
        Re: Can you take a recently discharged bankrupt to small court

        Thanks for the replies guys.

        i haven't yet made a formal claim but have sent her a letter asking for the money.

        The common sense in me agrees with you both 100% but after being through the system I'm cynical of relying on it.

        i suppose the grey area for me is that the damage to the property was done a good while before she filed for bankruptcy, therefore could it be said that we should've made the claim at the time? Even though it wouldn't have gone anywhere.

        thanks all

        reg

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Can you take a recently discharged bankrupt to small court

          did you submit a court claim before she went bankrupt for the £4000

          dave

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Can you take a recently discharged bankrupt to small court

            If you won the claim has she the money to pay it or would she ignore it?

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Can you take a recently discharged bankrupt to small court

              No Dave, the claim would be completely new a good 7 or 8 months after she was discharged from bankruptcy.

              i do believe she has the money aswell , she works as a ward sister and was doing unsociable hours etc, obviously that all changed when she went bankrupt, she reduced her hours so that she didn't have to pay us anything through the trustee in bankruptcy.

              i would normally feel sorry for someone that has fallen on hard times and had to go through that but this woman has brought it all on herself despite offers of help then she has had in total 91k of debts consisting of our costs, her own costs and numerous credit cards she ran up to the limit knowing she was filing for bankruptcy wiped and forgotten about all in a year.

              reg

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Can you take a recently discharged bankrupt to small court

                have you tried to settle this with her out of court??

                dave

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Can you take a recently discharged bankrupt to small court

                  I sent her a letter by recorded delivery with a deadline which she has ignored

                  reg

                  Comment

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