Understanding Insolvency and Breathing Space Options in the UK

Insolvency proceedings in the UK can be overwhelming, bureaucratic and too long to afford for the claimants. Debtors have a variety of legal tools to delay payments. While all legal systems have tools to help debtors to pay their debts, those tools can be used the other way around.

What is breathing space?

Its a legal tool available in the UK for debt relief and payment delay for debtors, so they can plan how to manage their debt. Breathing space allows temporary protection up to 60 days to get advise and make a payment plan.

However, every law has a loophole and it has been used to skip or delay debt payments for months or years. Breathing space protects debtors during a maximun of 60 days. To be elegible for breathing space, individuals must comply with:

• not have a debt relief order (DRO), an individual voluntary arrangement (IVA), an interim order, or be an undischarged bankrupt at the time you apply

• not already be using the ‘Breathing Space’ scheme

• not have used the ‘Breathing Space’ scheme in the last 12 months, unless it was for a mental health crisis

Mental health crisis as a tool for "sine die" unpaid debts

Mental health crisis definition is vague and subject to interpretation and breathing space is applicable during the duration of the treatment and additional 30 days are granted, which could last years.

Investigations to know whether a real mental health crisis is happening or not

Our firm conducted deep level investigations on breathing space applications from individuals suffering mental health crisis. Our work combined private investigators and graphic evidence that mental health crisis may not be actually happening and had been used as a tool to delay payments "sine die".

Fake insolvency and obtaining evidence

Our firm has conducted investigations in Spain, UK, Greece, Morocco to obtain evidence of fake insolvency and has taken those to courts to stop breathing space process and start debt recovery actions.

Individuals with a high standard of living, visiting the most expensive hotels and restaurants but insolvent to authorities is a common fraud that requires gathering, intelligence and obtaining evidence for courts. Another common service is to find hidden assets or proxies acting on behalf of the insolvent.