There is no Official Receiver in Scotland, no county court petition and no £680 fee. Guidance written for England and Wales will send you wrong on nearly every figure.

What follows is the shape of a case from the route in to the day the last restriction falls away, with the section and the commencement date for each figure. How you actually apply is a separate step-by-step.

A debtor application to the Accountant in Bankruptcy, a petition to the sheriff by a qualified creditor, or a petition by a trustee acting under a trust deed. Section 2(1) sets out all three.

Only one of them is yours to start

A debtor application goes to the Accountant in Bankruptcy, which is an administrative body rather than a court. Nobody stands up in front of a sheriff and no petition is served on you.

The debtor route then splits. Section 2(2) sets out the Minimal Asset Process, the short route for people with very little, and section 2(8) sets out full administration.

The four ways in, side by side

The two figures pages get wrong are in that table. The £3,000 debtor minimum has been in section 2(8)(a) since 30 November 2016, and the £5,000 a creditor needs replaced £3,000 on 1 October 2022.

Two limbs of section 2(1)(b) were omitted on 31 December 2020, so the trustee petition is now section 2(1)(b)(iv). How much debt you need runs through every threshold in turn.

The word doing the work in section 7(1) is qualified: a creditor owed less than £5,000 in relevant debts cannot petition at all, and National Debtline’s Scottish bankruptcy guide is the one charity page that states both thresholds correctly.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy, unless a qualified insolvency practitioner is appointed. Section 51 decides which, and in a Minimal Asset Process it is always the Accountant in Bankruptcy.

The appointment rules in one paragraph each

On a debtor application you may nominate an insolvency practitioner who is qualified and has given an undertaking to act, annexed to the application. Where no such appointment is made, section 51(12) deems the Accountant in Bankruptcy to be the trustee.

Section 51(11) blocks that nomination in a Minimal Asset Process, so there is no choice on that route. On a creditor or trust deed petition the sheriff may appoint the petitioner’s nominee, and must appoint the Accountant in Bankruptcy if there is nobody.

What the trustee is there to do

Section 50 makes the trustee responsible for recovering, managing and realising your estate and distributing it among creditors, for finding out why you became insolvent and for reporting to the Accountant in Bankruptcy. What a trustee in sequestration does sets the role out in full.

Creditors can replace the trustee at the statutory meeting under section 49. They may not elect you, anyone with an interest opposed to the creditors generally, or the Accountant in Bankruptcy.

It ends on the date of sequestration. Section 72(2) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 ends an existing earnings arrestment, current maintenance arrestment or conjoined arrestment order on that date, by operation of law.

No application, no hearing, nothing to agree

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

Section 24(9) of the 2016 Act keeps earnings arrestments out of the general 60-day preference rules, because section 72 deals with them separately. An article citing section 24 for this is citing the subsection that disclaims it.

A moratorium is a different thing and does the opposite

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 is the trap in this subject. The moratorium is the protection most people get first, and it is the award, not the application, that stops the deduction.

The two events compared

The six months has applied since 1 October 2022, when it replaced six weeks. What sequestration does to sheriff officers and other diligence covers every form of enforcement in turn.

£150 to apply for full administration, and nothing at all for a Minimal Asset Process. Regulation 4(3)(c) of the 2023 Regulations set that position on 6 February 2023.

The fee, and who does not pay it

The application fee is £150, and it is not payable if you receive certain prescribed benefits or the common financial tool shows you have no surplus income.

The benefits exemption came in on 29 March 2021 and the nil surplus exemption on 6 February 2023. Three commercial pages still print £200, which was the figure before 29 March 2021.

What a sequestration costs in total separates the application fee from the trustee’s costs, and the exemptions are worth checking before anyone asks you for money.

The monthly contribution

A debtor contribution order is made in every sequestration under section 90(1), and section 90(4) allows it to be fixed at zero. Regulation 15 sets the amount using the common financial tool.

The prescribed tool is the Common Financial Statement, under regulation 15(1) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Regulations 2016.

Most sources name the Standard Financial Statement, which is the tool used elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Regulations that would have moved Scotland to it were drafted in 2018 and never made.

Regulation 15(7) means no contribution is due where your income is solely social security benefits and tax credits. How a contribution is calculated explains the trigger figures.

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

They pass to the trustee to be realised for the creditors. Some property is kept out of the estate, and the family home has a rule of its own.

The family home, and the three-year long-stop

Section 112(2) provides that at the end of three years beginning with the date of sequestration your right or interest in the family home ceases to form part of the estate and is reinvested in you, with no conveyance needed.

That is a long-stop on the trustee doing nothing, not a promise. Nine listed steps by the trustee defeat it, and section 112(6) lets the sheriff substitute a longer period.

Owning land is also a bar to the Minimal Asset Process, so a homeowner is normally in a full administration case. Whether you lose your home deals with the consent rules and the equity question.

What the sequestration does not reach

Property that would be excluded from vesting under this or another enactment stays with you, and the Accountant in Bankruptcy publishes its practice on vehicles, tools and household goods.

Ask your money adviser how each item you own would be treated before you apply. That question is much cheaper to answer beforehand than afterwards.

Twelve months in a full administration case and six months in a Minimal Asset Process. Section 137(2) is a power exercisable at any time after twelve months, and section 140(1) discharges a Minimal Asset Process debtor automatically.

Twelve months is a decision, not a date

It is a decision rather than a date. Sections 137 and 138 give a discretion exercisable at any time after twelve months, with a review and an appeal if it goes against you.

Your trustee sends a report to the Accountant in Bankruptcy without delay after the ten-month point, and recipients have 28 days to make representations on it. A discharge does not take effect for a further 14 days.

The categories the Accountant in Bankruptcy uses when it defers a discharge come from its own notes for guidance rather than from the Act.

What discharge does and does not do

Note where the student loan sits. It is not in the section 145(3) list at all, and survives instead because section 145(7) leaves the student loan regulations untouched.

Which debts are not written off goes through the list, and whether discharge ends everything deals with what carries on afterwards.

A public entry anyone can search, a mark on your credit file for years, and restrictions while you are undischarged. That is the trade for the debt relief.

The public record

Your case goes on the Register of Insolvencies, which anyone may search free of charge. No retention period appears in the Act or the regulations, and whether your sequestration is public sets out what each body publishes and why the figures do not reconcile.

The credit file is a separate record kept by Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, and its length is set by their own published retention schedules rather than by law. How sequestration affects your credit file gives each agency’s position.

Restrictions while the case runs

While undischarged you must disclose the sequestration when obtaining credit of £2,000 or more, or credit of any amount while you already owe £1,000 or more. Utility charges and council tax are left out of that £1,000 calculation.

There is no such thing as a bankruptcy restrictions undertaking in Scotland. The 2016 Act provides for orders and interim orders only, and undertakings belong to the law of England and Wales.

A bankruptcy restrictions order runs for between two and five years where the Accountant in Bankruptcy makes it.

How common is all this?

The Accountant in Bankruptcy published its 2025-26 annual statistics on 26 August 2026, and they are the current picture.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy publishes medians rather than averages, and says so. A page giving you an average debt figure for Scottish bankruptcy is not using the published data.