Friday 5 February 2010

How is your bankruptcy advertised?

The following is part of an email reply I gave to someone recently - I thought it deserved a wider audience:

There are, as I understand it, two ways that your bankruptcy is advertised - and neither way is likely ever to reach people you know.
  1. They put it in a paper in London called The London Gazette - 'one of the official journals of record of the British government' according to Wikipedia. They also have a website ( http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/ ). Nobody, apart from lawyers and ambulance chasers reads this. I have been able to find myself listed there, and they put in your full name, occupation and address - but as far as I can see this sort of thing doesn't end up in Google and other search engines (but I might be wrong - certainly I've tried various searches to try to make this pop out of Google associated with my name and I've failed every time). Interestingly, you might get a few letters from companies that deal with debt management once your name is in this - ignore the letters, they are scum!
  2. You name is also put on the Insolvency Register which is linked from the Insolvency Service's website (http://www.insolvency.gov.uk/bankruptcy/bankruptcysearch.htm ). Again, no one reads this sort of stuff apart from lawyers and ambulance chasers...
So basically, my message is - don't worry. Once you are bankrupt life bizarrely goes on and even gets back to a form of normality. It's what I call a 'new normality' - normal, but not quite the same as before! Apart from the people I have specifically told - nobody know that I'm currently bankrupt, and indeed they need never know.