Both figures have stood unamended since 30 November 2016, and so has the £3,000 vehicle disregard. What has never been settled is how anything is to be valued against them.

What the Accountant in Bankruptcy publishes about valuation covers a vehicle and an insurance policy, and nothing else. For anything else, the honest answer is to ask your adviser.

That is more useful than a made-up rule, because the exclusions do most of the work anyway. How a MAP works covers the process these tests sit inside.

Your assets must be worth no more than £2,000 in total under section 2(2)(c), and no single item may be worth more than £1,000 under section 2(2)(d).

Gross, not net

Section 2(2)(c) measures the total value of your assets leaving out of account any liabilities. It is a value test rather than an equity test.

So money owed on an item does not reduce it. That catches people who have worked their position out on what they would be left with.

Failing either one is enough

The two tests are separate and both have to be satisfied. Someone with £1,800 of assets in total still fails if one of those items is worth £1,200.

The date is the date of the application

Both tests apply on the date the debtor application is made. The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s evidence checklist works to the date the application is signed and asks for statements verifying balances then.

Nothing sets out how an asset is to be valued for these limits. Section 2(4) allows valuation regulations to be made and none ever has been, so ask your money adviser how yours will be treated.

The power exists and has never been used

Section 2(4) is the enabling provision. The whole of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Regulations 2016 runs to 34 regulations and three schedules, and not one of them prescribes how value is to be determined.

Market value, resale value, forced-sale value and insurance value are all absent from the Act and from the regulations. None of them is the rule, because there is no rule.

What the Accountant in Bankruptcy does publish

Those three come from chapter 4 of the guidance on assets and the evidence checklist. There is no general instruction covering a sofa, a laptop or a bicycle.

What that means for you in practice

Put a sensible figure on ordinary belongings and let your adviser test it. If an item is close to £1,000, get the point decided before the application is signed rather than after.

That is not a hedge. It is the only honest answer available from the published material.

Three categories, all in section 2(3): property that would be excluded from vesting in the trustee, a qualifying vehicle, and any other property of a prescribed type.

The first category does most of the work

Section 2(3)(a) removes from the calculation anything that would be excluded from vesting under any enactment. National Debtline puts the same point in plainer words: basic household items do not count.

Your bed, your cooker and your washing machine are not going into the arithmetic. Nor is anything else the enactments keep out of the trustee’s hands.

Tools of the trade

The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s debtor guide says you may keep tools you need for your trade up to a value of £1,000. It gives no statutory citation for that figure, so treat it as AiB’s stated position.

What is counted and what is not

A vehicle you reasonably require and which is worth no more than £3,000 is left out of the asset calculation altogether, under section 2(3)(b).

Three things have to line up

You must reasonably require the use of a vehicle, the value must not exceed £3,000, and the vehicle must be owned by you. Reasonable requirement is not defined in the Act.

The guidance on assets warns that the valuation matters because the legislation lets a debtor keep a vehicle only up to £3,000 in value and only where it is reasonably required.

Where the number has to come from

A valuation is expected from an independent recognised source such as Glass’s guide, Parkers or a car dealership. A figure you have arrived at yourself will not carry the point.

Where the car is on Motability or hire purchase, the checklist asks for the agreement instead, because you do not own it outright.

The cliff edge above £3,000

There is no partial relief. A vehicle above the ceiling is counted at its full value, which breaks both tests, and the checklist says in terms that the criteria will not be met.

So a car valued at £3,100 is treated very differently from one valued at £2,900. Whether you can keep your car in a MAP works through the figures.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s evidence checklist treats savings above £1,000 across all your accounts as defeating a Minimal Asset Process application. That is its practice rather than something the Act states.

Notice which test that is applied to

The effect is that the Accountant in Bankruptcy applies £1,000 rather than £2,000 to pooled savings, and it does not say which subsection it is applying. That is stricter than reading the two subsections separately would suggest.

It is application practice set out in AiB’s own checklist and no authority is given for it. What happens to your savings in a MAP sets out how far the published material goes.

The checklist also watches the run-up

Where a balance comes near £1,000 at any point in a statement period, verification of the balance at the date of signing will be requested. Have the statements ready.

Policies count at surrender value

The guidance on assets tells advisers to establish any immediate realisation value, and says a surrender value above £1,000 will make a debtor ineligible for a MAP.

Get that figure in writing before anything is signed. It is one of the commonest reasons an application that looked fine does not qualify.

Joint ownership and pensions are both unanswered

No source addresses how a jointly owned item is counted, whether at its full value or at your share of it. A joint bank account is the case most people ask about and it is not answered anywhere published.

The same is true of pensions. Whether you lose your pension in a MAP and what happens to a jointly owned asset each set out exactly how far the sources go.

Better than an abstract rule. Below are eight positions, with what happens to each and why, using only what the Act and the published guidance actually say.

Eight worked cases

One thing the table cannot tell you

Where a figure is arguable, the outcome depends on what your adviser and the Accountant in Bankruptcy accept. That is a consequence of there being no prescribed valuation method rather than of anyone being difficult.

What the pattern shows

A savings balance and a policy surrender value are the two easiest things to check in advance. Both are checked against the £1,000 figure rather than the £2,000 one.

The debt side has its own carve-out worth knowing about. Which debts count towards the MAP debt limit covers the student loan point that most pages get wrong.

The case can stop being a MAP. Paragraph 2 of Schedule 1 lets the Accountant in Bankruptcy end the MAP modifications where your total assets exceed a prescribed figure.

The figure trap in the Act

Paragraph 2(5)(a) reads £5,000 on the face of the Act. Regulation 14 prescribes £2,000 in its place, and £2,000 is the figure that operates.

Anyone quoting the Act without the regulations will give you the wrong number. It is the commonest legislative trap in this whole subject.

How assets rise without you doing anything

Section 86 vests property acquired after the date of sequestration in the trustee at the date of acquisition, with no lower limit written in.

An inheritance in month three can do it on its own. Whether a MAP can be transferred to full administration sets out what changes if it happens.

Which is why the reporting matters

The Accountant in Bankruptcy tells MAP debtors to report income changes, money received and inheritances. Do it early and in writing, and how to apply for a MAP covers what the application itself has to disclose.

Before any of it, get the eight entry conditions checked against your own figures. Whether you are eligible for a MAP runs through each of them, and whether owning a house rules you out covers the one that is not about value at all.