That last point is the one almost nobody prints. A statutory moratorium and an award of sequestration do opposite things to a wage arrestment, and National Debtline’s diligence guide runs to thousands of words without setting the two against each other.

What follows separates them, then works through each kind of diligence in turn. How sequestration works covers the process itself.

Yes, and it happens by operation of law. Section 72(2) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 ends an existing earnings arrestment on the date of sequestration.

What the subsection actually reaches

An award of sequestration ends an earnings arrestment. Section 72(2) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 says an earnings arrestment, a current maintenance arrestment, a conjoined arrestment order or a deduction from earnings order ceases to have effect on the date of sequestration.

Section 72(4) then bars a fresh earnings arrestment for a debt that could be claimed in the sequestration.

The date that matters is not the date you apply

Section 72(5) ties the trigger to the date of sequestration as section 22(7) of the 2016 Act defines it. On a debtor application that is the date the award is made, so deductions carry on until then.

On a creditor petition the date falls earlier, when the sheriff granted warrant. How quickly a wage arrestment can be stopped deals with the practical timing.

Nothing in section 72(2) tells your employer

The subsection ends the arrestment and imposes no notification duty on anyone. A payroll department that has heard nothing will keep deducting.

So ask your adviser who is writing to your employer, and check the next payslip yourself. Money already taken from your wages explains why those deductions are not refunded.

No. It does the opposite on this one point, and that is the single most misunderstood thing in Scottish debt enforcement.

What a moratorium stops

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.

It does not stop a creditor obtaining a decree, and interest and charges keep accruing throughout.

What it expressly does not stop

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.

That permission sits in section 197(5) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016, which lists the things that stay competent despite the general prohibition in section 197(3).

Two events, opposite effects on the same deduction

The six months is recent, and pages updated in 2024 and 2025 still print the old six weeks. Whether a statutory moratorium stops a wage arrestment sets out the whole position.

The creditor loses the advantage rather than the money coming back to you. Section 24 of the 2016 Act strips the preference and passes the arrested estate to your trustee.

The 60-day equalisation rule

No arrestment or attachment executed within the 60 days before the date of sequestration, or on or after it, is effectual to create a preference. Section 24(7) transfers the arrested estate to the trustee instead.

That is equalisation, not a refund. Funds taken out of a bank account go into the estate for the creditors as a body rather than back to your account.

Why section 24 is the wrong place to look for the wage arrestment answer

Section 24(9) takes earnings arrestments, current maintenance arrestments, conjoined arrestment orders and Child Support Act deductions out of those rules altogether. They are dealt with separately, by section 72 of the 1987 Act.

Any page that cites section 24 for the proposition that sequestration stops a wage arrestment is citing the one subsection that disclaims it.

Each kind of diligence, and what the award does to it

Outside sequestration, a bank arrestment cannot touch the first £1,000 in a personal account. What a bank arrestment is explains that protected minimum balance and how it is applied.

For the debts caught by it, largely yes, though the provision differs by diligence. An earnings arrestment ends outright and cannot be restarted, and an arrestment of funds or an attachment gives the creditor no preference and what it caught passes to your trustee.

Officers act on instructions, so ask which debt

Sheriff officers are not creditors. The question is always which debt is being enforced and whether it is claimable in your sequestration, and our sheriff officer advice pages cover how the firms operate.

Where the debt is caught, write to the officers and to the creditor with your case details and copy your trustee. Keep the letter short and factual.

They can check it themselves for nothing

The Register of Insolvencies is kept by the Accountant in Bankruptcy under section 200 of the 2016 Act, which requires it to be available for inspection and requires a certified copy of an entry to be provided to anyone who asks.

So verification takes a creditor about a minute. Whether your sequestration is public covers what the register shows about you.

If contact carries on anyway

Raise it with your trustee and with your money adviser rather than arguing it out yourself. The trustee has standing in the sequestration that you do not.

The short list in section 145(3) of the 2016 Act, plus a student loan and the security behind any secured debt.

What survives, and what does not

Section 145(3) lists what survives. Fines and other court penalties, debts obtained by fraud, and aliment or a periodical allowance payable on divorce are not written off.

Student loans are not written off either, by a different route. Section 145(7) leaves the student loan regulations untouched rather than listing the debt as an exception.

Because those debts are not discharged, the protection against enforcement is not the same for them. Which debts are not written off goes through each category.

New liabilities are outside it too

Rent, council tax and utility charges for the period after the award are current bills rather than bankruptcy debts. Citizens Advice Scotland lists the ordinary arrears that are included, and anything you take on afterwards is yours to pay.

A debtor contribution order in most full administration cases, and an order fixed at zero in a Minimal Asset Process.

It is worked out differently from an arrestment

A debtor contribution order is set using the common financial tool, so it is calculated from what your budget shows you can afford rather than from what you owe.

An earnings arrestment works off fixed statutory tables and takes no account of what you spend. The contribution is assessed against your own budget instead.

Regulation 15(7) of the 2016 Regulations means no contribution is due where your income is solely social security benefits and tax credits. How a debtor contribution order is calculated sets out the method.

The order outlasts your discharge

It normally runs for 48 months, which is longer than the twelve months to discharge. The payments carry on after you are discharged.

That gap catches almost everybody. Whether discharge ends everything at twelve months explains what carries on.

Your employer only becomes involved if you stop paying

Under section 94 the trustee may instruct the person paying your income to deduct the contribution, and the power arises where you have failed to comply and have failed to pay for two payment intervals.

The payer may charge a fee equivalent to the employer’s fee for operating diligence against earnings and take it from the balance due to you. Until that point the contribution is something you pay yourself.

Plan for the deduction to continue, and ask your adviser about a moratorium for everything else. Those two things are not the same protection.

The order to work through it

Money advice from an approved adviser is a statutory requirement before a debtor application in any event. How to apply for sequestration sets out the paperwork and the order it happens in.

Sequestration is not the only route to an arrestment

A protected trust deed ends one on the date of protection, and approval of a debt payment programme reaches an arrestment of your income. A trust deed and the Debt Arrangement Scheme are both worth putting on the table.

A Minimal Asset Process is a sequestration too, so section 72(2) applies to it in the same way. Whether a MAP stops an existing wage arrestment covers that route in full.