One owed relevant debts of at least £5,000. Section 7(1) sets the figure, and creditors owed less can club together to reach it.

Where the £5,000 came from

Section 20(2) of the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Act 2022 substituted £5,000 for £3,000 with effect from 1 October 2022, subject to a saving in section 20(3) of that Act.

It was a permanent change rather than a temporary measure. Pages still printing £3,000 for a creditor petition are more than three years out of date.

Not everything a creditor claims counts

Section 7(2) defines relevant debts as liquid or illiquid debts, secured or unsecured, other than contingent or future debts and amounts payable under a confiscation order.

So the arithmetic is not simply the balance on a letter. How much debt you need to go bankrupt sets each threshold against its provision.

A trust deed trustee is in a different position

Under section 2(1)(b)(iv) a trustee acting under a trust deed may petition where a condition in section 2(7) is satisfied, such as your failure to comply with an obligation under the deed.

There is no £5,000 threshold on that route and no four-month window. Section 13(2)(b)(i) lets such a trustee petition at any time.

It is the statutory gateway a creditor has to walk through first. Section 16(1) lists the ways it arises, and without one of them there is no petition.

The listed events

The charge for payment is the one most people meet. What a charge for payment is explains the document and the days you have.

Three of those limbs carry a proviso in section 16(2). If a charge for payment, a decree of adjudication or a revoked payment programme is the basis, that proviso is worth asking your adviser about.

It can also arise from something you do

Granting a trust deed constitutes apparent insolvency, and so does the revocation of a debt payment programme. Neither of those depends on a creditor taking a step.

Section 2(9) stops that cutting one way only. You are not apparently insolvent by reason only of granting a trust deed or of giving notice to creditors under section 16(1)(c).

Apparent insolvency is not the same as a certificate

The creditor’s gateway is apparent insolvency. Yours is a certificate for sequestration granted by a money adviser, and what that certificate is sets it out.

The two are alternatives rather than the same thing. One depends on a creditor acting and the other does not.

Four months. Section 13(2)(a) allows a qualified creditor’s petition only where the apparent insolvency founded on was constituted within the four months before the petition is presented.

Why the date on the paperwork matters

A charge for payment that expired eight months ago cannot be dusted off as the basis of a petition today. The creditor would have to constitute apparent insolvency again.

That makes the dates on your own documents worth keeping. Take them to the appointment rather than working from memory.

What the four months is measured from

It runs from the date the apparent insolvency was constituted, not from the date the debt arose. A debt can be years old and still be inside a fresh four-month window.

That is why a creditor will often serve a new charge for payment before petitioning. The old one has done its work and the clock on it has run out.

Two other duties on the petitioner

Section 13(1) requires the petitioner to send a copy of the petition to the Accountant in Bankruptcy on the day it is presented.

Section 13(5) has a separate effect worth knowing. The presentation of a petition bars the effect of any enactment or rule of law about the limitation of actions.

Roughly one Scottish bankruptcy in five starts with a creditor. The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s 2025-26 annual statistics, published on 26 August 2026, give 561 creditor petitions against 2,415 debtor applications.

The published figures

Creditor petitions rose 9.4 per cent on the year before, from 513. Debtor applications rose 22.6 per cent over the same period.

mygov.scot sets out the creditor route in official terms, and it is the best short official page on the subject.

Why the split matters to a reader

Most people who end up sequestrated in Scotland chose it. That is worth knowing if a letter has arrived threatening to do it to you.

Applying yourself also changes who the trustee is likely to be, and puts the timing in your hands rather than the creditor’s.

What the numbers do not tell you

A petition that is threatened is not a petition that is presented. Many are resolved before the sheriff sees them, and none of that appears in an annual statistic.

It goes before the sheriff, who decides it and appoints a trustee. Section 51 lets the sheriff appoint the petitioner’s nominee where one is qualified and has given an undertaking, and requires the Accountant in Bankruptcy to be appointed otherwise.

The two routes compared

Whoever is appointed, the office is the same one. What a trustee in sequestration does sets out the duties that follow.

There is no Official Receiver in Scotland

Scottish cases are administered by the Accountant in Bankruptcy or by a private insolvency practitioner appointed as trustee. The Official Receiver, the county court petition and the £680 fee all belong to England and Wales.

If a page you are reading mentions any of those, it is not describing Scottish law. How sequestration works sets out the Scottish process.

Take advice immediately, and take the paperwork with you. The dates on a charge for payment decide what is still possible.

The options worth asking about

• A statutory moratorium, which stops new diligence and creditor petitions for sequestration.
• A debtor application of your own, which puts the timing and the trustee nomination in your hands.
• A debt payment programme, where the arithmetic supports repaying in full.
• Settling or disputing the underlying debt, where there is a genuine defence to it.

The moratorium, and what it does not do

A statutory moratorium gives six months of protection and you get one per rolling 12 months. It stops service of a charge for payment, stops new diligence and stops creditor petitions for sequestration.

A statutory moratorium is the exception. It does not stop an earnings arrestment that was already running: section 197(5)(d) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 lets a creditor carry on executing an earnings arrestment, a current maintenance arrestment or a conjoined arrestment order that came into effect before the moratorium began.

How to apply for a moratorium covers the mechanics, and whether a moratorium stops a wage arrestment deals with the limit on it.

If an award is made anyway

Recall is possible. Section 29 lets the debtor, a creditor, the trustee, the Accountant in Bankruptcy or anyone with an interest petition the sheriff, and section 29(6) says such a petition may be presented at any time.

Section 31 provides a separate route to the Accountant in Bankruptcy on the single ground that you have paid or are able to pay your debts in full.

Paying everything within six months avoids interest, but paying only part of it does not. Section 37A(4) makes interest payable on the whole debt, including the part already paid.

Enforcement against you stops being a free-for-all. Section 72(2) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 ends an existing earnings arrestment on the date of sequestration.

What happens to each kind of diligence

Section 24 does the equalisation work for arrestments and attachments, and section 24(9) keeps earnings arrestments outside it.

Sheriff officers acting for the creditor cannot start again for a debt claimable in the sequestration. Our sheriff officer pages and what sequestration does to diligence set out the detail.

What does not change

A secured creditor keeps its right to enforce the security. Ongoing liabilities such as rent and council tax for the period after the award are still yours to pay.

The debts in the statutory list are not written off either. Fines, penalties due to the Crown, compensation orders and liabilities incurred by fraud all survive a discharge.

And the rest of the case runs as normal

Discharge is normally considered twelve months after the award, whoever started it. How long sequestration lasts covers the clocks, and the credit file position is the same either way.