I have a 'friend' who went through a painful divorce 5 years ago, in which that person lost everything to his EX. Including house, all savings, furniture, car . . all due to his stupidly trying to be a Mr Nice and fair guy.

His EX then proceeded to sue him for half of his earnings . .even though their 2 children were already grown up.

To defend that he had to pay a solicitor and court fees using his credit card . . which is now over the limit.
He came to Switzerland, to try and start again . . to build something new for himself.
However he was left with the huge credit card bills in the UK.

Last week he contacted them to try and sort out an arrangement whereby he could pay them back their money. They actually appreciate it when you do contact them and, however painful it is . . they will try to help you.

It's not that difficult . . . . . but don't walk away from it.

yeah... don't be behaving like a banker

a) it's only public if he discloses (or is careless not to conceal) his identity

b) there are thousands of public access points, so tracing an IP address doesn't always do you any good

c) it really may be 'a friend'.. in which case the identity of the perpetrator is fully protected.

Could it be same friend who is earning 3 million or are they related ?? I sniff a troll....

don't go near Guernsey either... the HMRC will sniff you (oopss, sorry, "your friend") out

Yes. You(r friend) should spend some "monies" on a dictionary. The word is money.

In your (friend's) dreams.

These folk come well recommended with a proven track-record.

Already covered elsewhere - don't drop the soap.
.

embarrassing when you correct someone's spelling without consulting a dictionary. "Monies" is indeed a word in the English language, and was incidentally correctly used by the OP.

oh well... as they say - some days you are the pigeon, other days the statue.

I started to read the responses but they were so ignorant and nasty that I broke off the effort.

Pre-bankruptcy planning is no more immoral or illegal than consulting a criminal lawyer about whether something is a crime, or having a criminal lawyer (a different one) defend you if you have been accused of a crime. Never mind Liz Cheney who would hold defense lawyers guilty of something or other. Even the Nuremberg defendants had defence lawyers.

The issues here are:

1) Exempt property. If the debtor were filing for bankruptcy in the USA exemptions would be fairly generous, including pensions and in some states annuities (depending on date purchased) and homesteads. In the UK it's mainly tools of the trade that are exempt, but many pensions (not private ones) are also exempt.

2) Fraudulent conveyances. Stuff given away before bankruptcy or sold for an undervalue (there is no statute of limitations in England, but most bankruptcy lawyers say that ten years is about the practical limit) can be reclaimed by the trustee or receiver. (There are some complex issues here.)

3) Bankruptcy discharge. A discharge is valid only as against debts for which the "proper law" is the same as the law of the bankruptcy proceeding -- unless the (foreign) creditor has participated in some way in that proceeding. But again, an American bankruptcy proceeding can work wonders since there is no remedy in the country that issued the discharge even if the debt is still valid elsewhere. (But under present law a British citizen would have to live in the USA for some time, certainly more than 91 days -- meaning he'd need a visa -- to file for bankruptcy there. In the Lloyd's of London scam a dozen or more British investors successfully filed bankruptcy in Florida and got off the hook.)

4. Cross-border bankruptcy. For small claims a foreign creditor almost never files proof of debt abroad. But an English trustee/receiver in bankruptcy can bring an ancillary proceeding abroad (even in the USA or Switzerland) to recover assets. Or there might be a money-laundering or (in the UK) an "absconding with assets" crime.

I don't think the query was serious: after all, everybody knows a bankrupt is put under oath to declare his assets worldwide. And exporting assets while insolvent may not only be criminal but may preclude a discharge. On the other hand there may be subtle, legal ways to accomplish the same thing. For example: one might be liable for Swiss taxes (AVS for example) and even if technically unlawful payment of foreign taxes (1) can't be reversed by any court anywhere and (2) even if a preference (a technical term) would scarcely result in prosecution or condemnation for contempt because not to pay tax is itself a crime.

You're hired!!

The fact that the OP never replied is, IMHO, he was talking about himself and not a friend.

I think you miss the point old chap, it's not about wriggling through loopholes to save yourself the money that rightly belongs to someone else that people object to, but the fact that some poor sods are likely hurting way more than Mr 'Friend' with his £100k hidden away becuase of the actions of selfish tw4ts like him.

He should do the right, moral and honorable thing and settle as best he can with the people he's in debt to. Advocating anything else put's you down at his 'Friends' level.

Bankruptcy is not about morality, or else there would be no exemptions at all. I write on what the law is (lege lata) not on what it ought to be (lege ferenda). If you don't like the law don't shoot the messenger, write to your MP, Congressperson, National Assemblyperson, etc.

Exemptions aren't about loopholes. They have and had a practical basis. The guru on this, now long dead, was Kurt H. Nadelmann, an escapee from Nazi Germany and a noted Harvard professor: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/31/ob...l-scholar.html

Continental Europe did not have a law of consumer bankruptcy -- only commercial insolvency -- until the advent of the credit card. Now Germany and the Scandinavian countries have consumer discharge provisions; France has the Loi Neiertz (a 5-year standstill). There are alternatives to bankruptcy, encouraged by the 1995 amendments to the US Bankruptcy Code: Chapter 13; and also in the English bankruptcy law: IVAs.

But the job of the jurist is to instruct on what the law is when asked. Don't blame me for the law's encouragement if profligacy. If the OP or his Friend wants to run off to Texas and buy a ranch near GW Bush's and claim exemption -- well £100,000 would certainly be enough in this depressed market to get him some land, and probably he could wait out the 91 days or whatever. But he couldn't legally work unless he got the right kind of visa, or was a writer or artist, etc. And you can't effectively file bankruptcy while on a visa waiver.

In England, as a matter of practicality, he's probably stuck. But I ranked the question with those college prank letters to sex magazines: the OP just wanted to start something. And since I had (I'm retired) a professional interest in the matter I wrote what the law is. After all, when the creditor was the Society of Lloyd's -- a criminal gang if there ever was one -- who could blame the scammed investors for taking off to Florida and filing bankruptcy? We don't know who the creditors are here. If they are payday lenders and the £100,000 is a recent inheritance, more power to him. (Of course any overindebted person should have a will in his favour re-drafted to put the money into a discretionary trust. But that's too complex for this forum.)

We do, banks and credit cards

You have to be an ex lawyer or accountant to not see the base immorality of you say. Running up debts and not paying them, especially when you have the means is alien to most people. Further if you have the means to pay (£100k) but run up debt and then default to bankruptcy to avoid paying them, is an intentional action that only a lawyer or bean counter would find acceptable.

Andy, you clearly know your stuff, but PG's point still stands.

Your long explanations and justifications are exactly why people don't like lawyers. Because they talk about what the law is, while most of us believe right and wrong as we see it, as in lege ferenda, as you so nicely put it.

Several points you make are well put indeed, and I don't think that PG was shooting the messenger. There are several parts there that could be interpreted as trying to dodge the bullet. The one that springs out is

He was saying that your post is smoke and mirror stuff that most of the repliers (me included) believe is wrong, when the facts available are presented (and there are few facts here just the OP's post).

I hasten to add that we all love you (assuming you are a lawyer) when we need you .

Basically mine and every one else point Carlos. Folk can and do get away with murder, but it doesn't mean it's right. Further the ability of people to pay vast sums for professionals to evade their responsibilites, is exactly the reason there is a lack of trust in these professions.

Oo! And another thing...

The point (to my simply mind) is that it does become a moral issue when people use it as a way to avoid repaying debts and avoiding their responsibilities.

This appears to be an increasing fashion as people pay less and less heed to personal reputations and the value of someone's standing. What I'm trying to say is that the stigma of bankruptcy is now much less than it used to be, so people care less about it. Indeed when you've paid your accountant and lawyer to hide away several mill in assets for a *ahem* rainy retirement day, being bankrupt is not such a big deal.

I spent more years (22) studying and researching law and collecting degrees (BA, LLB, MA, LLM, PhD) than I did working (for the US Government as a diplomat) earning money. I rarely take clients for money; mostly I write law review articles and live on rent that people pay for a couple of flats I own in Switzerland and London.

I have no particular cross to bear, nor any policy to promote. I studied and wrote on legal history. The concept of bankruptcy goes back hundreds of years (and longer, if you accept the Biblical concept of grace every 7 years). If you want to see an early explanation of bankruptcy and discharge, look here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/28408591

A person who deliberately incurs debts and then tries to discharge them is a fraudster, and bankruptcy judges know how to deal with such persons if the facts can be proved. But credit card companies virtually force their cards (or used to) on students and other naive customers. They charge huge rates of interest, discounting the losses from nonpayers.

Then they sell off, for pennies in the dollar, pence in the pound, unpaid accounts to vicious speculators who then harass the debtor until they get 100 cents in the dollar, 100 pence in the pound.

My sister-in-law, in her late 70s and living in California, was conned into a cell phone contract by an AT&T salesman who forged her dead husband's signature on the contract. I convinced AT&T to forgive the cancellation charge, yet they sold off the contract to a shark/vulture who then harassed her until I intervened and told the firm that I'd caught them lying and would prosecute them to the end of time. They backed off: whether they trashed my sister-in-law's credit rating is immaterial since she doesn't need or want credit.

Everything is relative. As a consumer credit counselor (which I am not and never have been, but at least for the USA I think the National Consumer Law Center is magnificent) one has to be sympathetic to victims of predatory lenders.

The concept of discharge in bankruptcy -- on which I wrote what I think to be a seminal paper, published in England and favourably quoted by a specialist American professor a few years later -- relates to English commercial culture. The right to a "fresh start" may have been unique to Anglo-American law in relation to consumers, but it has been everywhere and for all time (well, since debtors ceased to be put in prison) a fact of commercial law even in Civil Law countries.

I don't need to defend it: I report on what the law is, if you don't like it, if you want debtors to be tortured until they die or pay or their relatives pay up, hey -- why not join a Mexican drug gang?

Or write to your MP: here in Britain Parliament is sovereign and can ordain that black is white and day is night. Or, like the Indiana legislature, that pi = 3.2 and not 3.1415926 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

Let me say something in French which I quote from a story I read in grade school: Celui qui possède vit au dépens de celui qui travaille. Quiconque ne produit pas l'équivalent de ce qu'il consomme est un parasite social.

I looked that up on Google and JSTOR a few weeks ago, and found an explanation for it here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/26893275 After all, after 50+ years how could I remember where it came from?

Cheers

Not to put to fine a point on it, but you are just re-enforcing all the stereotypes of people with sharp suits and even sharper pencils... whilst blowing your own trumpet, totally avoiding any moral resposibility, and writing chapter and verse on who cares what to make you sound important or influential.

Most people just see this thread and the practice as bad form.

You may not have a cross to bear or a policy to promote, but I think that you are misrepresenting what I (and probably others, but I won't speak for them) was trying to say and taking it personally.

I'd like to pick two points that best illustrate that.

	Quote:	andy02
	A person who deliberately incurs debts and then tries to discharge them is a fraudster, and bankruptcy judges know how to deal with such persons if the facts can be proved.

	Quote:	andy02
	I don't need to defend it: I report on what the law is, if you don't like it, if you want debtors to be tortured until they die or pay or their relatives pay up, hey -- why not join a Mexican drug gang?

I believe, as did many others on this thread, that the OP's friend was deliberately trying to avoid his responsibilities and hide money in CH.

The telling part, to save you going back is this bit:

	Quote:	frontline69
	Will the monies be protected from UK authorities through the secrecy laws.

My interpretation: he's trying to save some money, go bankrupt and then have a nice little cushion to land on. Forgive me for getting that wrong, but those are the facts that we were given in the first post. Do you know something more on this case that we don't?

I don't have a problem with bankruptcy per se. And I don't want to join a drug cartel - that is a trite comment and one that suggests to me that you are taking this (too) personally.

I do have a problem with fraud. What's more your posts suggest that this (hiding money) can be done if you know the loop holes.

As for credit cards, fine and dandy. Yes they do shove them down your throat. Yet some, dare I say many, of us have managed without them or massive debt. You say write to the government, well, they don't really care, do they, otherwise they'd have put in far stricter regulations. But that's just my opinion.

Regarding your sister, given you seem to know your way around law, if I was in your shoes I'd have hung the company out to dry.

As for the French quote, you're basically saying the banks are to blame. So are you suggesting that if the OP were to defraud a bank or credit card company, that would be OK in your eyes, because they forced the money down the OP friend's throat in the first place? Again, do you know more info than we do?

I believe the OP was creating a nonexistent hypothetical case of fraud to get members of this forum excited. S/he seems to have succeeded.

	Quote:
	I don't have a problem with bankruptcy per se. And I don't want to join a drug cartel - that is a trite comment and one that suggests to me that you are taking this (too) personally.

Not at all. I practised bankruptcy law for about 3 years, and only in relation to clients who were defrauded by Lloyd's of London, who were running a Ponzi scheme on the level of Madoff. But who got away with it for various (and perhaps quite understandable) political reasons.

	Quote:
	I do have a problem with fraud. What's more your posts suggest that this (hiding money) can be done if you know the loop holes.

Exemptions have been around a long time, and in the USA (Florida and Texas especially) homestead exemptions are quite generous. In the UK they are not very generous: company and government pensions are largely exempt but private assets including private pensions are not. But discretionary trusts are everywhere exempt (although sometimes taken into consideration for alimony and child support). Nobody can force your parents to pay your debts for you.



I leave this issue to Elizabeth Warren, formerly Harvard Law School professor, now consultant to the Obama Administration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren With her daughter, she has written extensively on predatory financing and consumer overindebtedness.

If you want to bring back debtor's prisons, re-read Charles Dickens first.

I have no constituency and no particular law to defend or criticise. As a comparative lawyer I write articles setting out how different legal systems handle comparable problems differently. That's what I did here. In Dubai they throw debtors in prison: the airport parking lot is full of partly-paid-for cars, abandoned by absconders.

I do repeat this: there is nothing wrong with pre-bankruptcy planning. Laws were enacted that reflect local needs, and they are taken into consideration when banks and others extend credit. If a Payday or a Title loan company is going to demand 400% or 800% interest it's either because they expect to suffer substantial loss or they are taking advantage of ignorant, needy poor (and hey, they've got offices outside every US military base where local law allows, and do you really think that an overindebted soldier is going to have his mind on the job when he goes to war?)

	Quote:
	Regarding your sister, given you seem to know your way around law, if I was in your shoes I'd have hung the company out to dry.

I've lost you on that one. I have several sisters but I don't remember any of them having a problem with a company.

	Quote:
	As for the French quote, you're basically saying the banks are to blame.

No, I was ridiculing the exchange. You should have read the linked article on Scribd:

"In Le Bourg regénéré a young postal employee arrives in a small dormant town which does not understand, as Romains phrases it, 'why modern cities are so anxious and what prevents them from being happy.' The young man decides to awaken the town by writing on the wall of a urinal: 'Celui qui possede vit aux depens de celui qui travaille; quiconque ne produit pas l'équivalent de ce qu'il consomme est un parasite social.' The idea germinates slowly, but finally succeeds in undermining a complacent city organization."

To end it: anyone who puts £100k into a Swiss bank account and then files bankruptcy in the UK or the USA, concealing the fact of having absconded with or exported and hidden the money, will go to jail. That's what I said. I also added that if the guy were American, or became a US resident, the possibilities are different, and that, like Bowie Kuhn or OJ Simpson he could buy an expensive home in Florida and ignore his creditors. But he'd need a green card to get homestead exemption in Florida, and he can't get that very easily or very quickly, so it was a highly theoretical point. And Congress sort of agrees with you since they restricted the homestead exemption in the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions. Here's what a leading trust and estates (and asset protection) lawyer in America had to say about that: http://www.alperlaw.com/asset_planning_newsletter.html