Two other periods run alongside, and neither is a period of law. The public register entry and the credit file entry come from published guidance rather than from the Act.

Knowing which is which makes the whole thing easier to plan around. How a Minimal Asset Process works covers the process itself, and this page covers the timing.

Six months after the award, not six months after you applied. Section 140 discharges the debtor by operation of law, with no application to make and no decision for anyone to take.

Why that is one of the real advantages

In the longer form of sequestration a trustee prepares a report and the Accountant in Bankruptcy grants the discharge, and it can be refused where the debtor has not co-operated.

Section 140 contains no equivalent power. While the case remains a Minimal Asset Process, the discharge arrives on time.

Proof that it happened

You may apply to the Accountant in Bankruptcy after discharge for a certificate of discharge in the prescribed form. It is useful documentary proof if anyone asks about your status.

The trustee’s own discharge is a separate event that follows shortly afterwards, and it matters for the register rather than for you. Applying for a MAP sets out what has to happen before any of this starts.

Disclosure duties on borrowing and on trading under another name. Section 146 imposes them for six months beginning with the date of discharge.

They are duties to tell, not bans

Both figures are on the face of section 146 and have stood since the Act came into force on 30 November 2016. Neither has been amended since.

This is where a good deal of published content goes wrong. You are not prohibited from borrowing, and you commit an offence only if you borrow without telling the lender.

The sanction

Section 147 makes a breach an offence. On summary conviction the penalty is a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or imprisonment for up to three months.

That rises to six months where the person has a previous conviction inferring dishonest appropriation of property. On indictment it is a fine or up to two years.

A MAP-only provision

Section 146 applies where a debtor is discharged under section 140. It does not follow a full administration discharge, which is one of the few places the shorter route carries more.

mygov.scot says a Minimal Asset Process entry stays registered for 18 months from the date of bankruptcy, against at least five years for other bankruptcies. Neither figure is a statutory period.

There is no retention period in the legislation

The register is kept under section 200 of the 2016 Act, which sets out what goes on it and requires it to be available for inspection at all reasonable times. It says nothing about how long an entry stays.

Nor do the regulations that prescribe the register’s form. So any figure you are given is a statement of practice rather than of law.

What the Accountant in Bankruptcy says its practice is

Its notes for guidance on the register describe keeping information until the longer of a year after the trustee’s discharge, a year after a recall, or a year after the end of a period of bankruptcy restrictions.

In a Minimal Asset Process the debtor is discharged at six months and the trustee shortly after. The two statements do not reconcile precisely, and we have not tried to make them.

Withholding an entry

Information may be left off the register where the Accountant in Bankruptcy considers that including it would be likely to put someone at risk of violence or otherwise jeopardise their safety or welfare.

A request can be made with the application. Raise it with your adviser at the start rather than afterwards.

Six years from the date the bankruptcy begins, on the published guidance. mygov.scot puts it as a minimum of six years, and Citizens Advice Scotland and National Debtline both give six years.

The gap is the point

The register entry goes at around 18 months and the credit file entry runs for six years. That is roughly four and a half years of difference, and five years beyond the end of the restrictions.

So the case is over long before the record is. How long a MAP stays on your credit file deals with what sits alongside it and what to check.

Getting it removed

mygov.scot says Equifax, Experian and TransUnion may remove the entry automatically after six years, and that you can ask them directly if it is still showing.

Check all three, because they hold separate files. Nobody can remove an accurate entry before its time.

The four periods side by side

The first two rows are statute and the last two are guidance. Only the first two are fixed by the Act.

Two things. The case can be moved out of the Minimal Asset Process under paragraph 2 of Schedule 1, or a bankruptcy restrictions order can extend the restrictions well past the usual six months after discharge.

Conversion, and the figure that decides it

The Accountant in Bankruptcy may end the MAP modifications where, at any time after the application is made, your assets exceed the prescribed figure or you are assessed as able to make a contribution.

Paragraph 2(5)(a) reads £5,000 on the face of the Act, but regulation 14 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Regulations 2016 prescribes £2,000 in its place. £2,000 is the operative trigger.

You get a say before it happens

The Accountant in Bankruptcy must notify you of the circumstances it considers apply, and you have 14 days to make representations. It then decides and gives you written notice of the decision and its effect.

Paragraph 4 gives you a further 14 days to appeal to the sheriff. If the sheriff grants the appeal, the Minimal Asset Process continues.

What conversion does to the timetable

Discharge moves out to the full administration timetable, a contribution order can run for 48 months, and the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s guide for MAP debtors warns that a transfer triggers additional administration fees which delay discharge until they are paid.

Reporting a change is what keeps you in control of it. The difference between the two routes sets out what else changes.

Between two and five years where the Accountant in Bankruptcy makes it, and between five and fifteen where the sheriff does, under section 159. That is the single biggest variable in the whole process.

The window for making one is short

Section 158 requires any bankruptcy restrictions order to be made, or applied for, between the date of sequestration and the date your discharge becomes effective. In a Minimal Asset Process that window is the six months.

After that the Accountant in Bankruptcy needs the sheriff’s permission to make one or to apply for one. So this is a six-month issue in an ordinary case rather than an open-ended one.

You can ask for one to be revoked or varied

Section 159(3) lets the debtor apply for revocation or variation. Where the application goes to the Accountant in Bankruptcy, it must decide within 28 days and take account of representations made within 21 days.

There is then a 14-day appeal to the sheriff against that decision. A variation can bring an order to an end earlier than the day originally specified.

What keeps it off the table

The 2016 Act provides for bankruptcy restrictions orders only. Undertakings belonged to the 1985 Act regime and did not survive into the current one.

Full and honest disclosure to your adviser and to the Accountant in Bankruptcy is the whole answer here. The Accountant in Bankruptcy warns MAP debtors directly that concealing assets or making false declarations may lead to an order.

It is the shortest formal insolvency route in Scotland. Length is only one part of the comparison, and the credit file consequence is the same six years either way.

The four routes on time

A protected trust deed and a full administration are both formal insolvencies, and a trust deed against a Minimal Asset Process compares them on more than timing.

The honest shape of it

Plan around twelve months of restriction rather than six, and expect the credit record to outlive everything else by years. That is the trade.

If your circumstances are likely to change during the six months, say so at the outset. Whether you are eligible covers the conditions that have to hold, and whether a MAP stops a wage arrestment covers the thing that usually brings people to this page.