The application fee, the trustee’s outlays and remuneration, your monthly contribution, and the costs that are not money at all. They are paid by different people at different times.

Which of them you actually hand over

Only the first is a sum you pay before anything happens, and most applicants do not pay it. The second comes out of the case rather than out of your pocket.

The third is the one that lasts, and how a contribution is calculated is the article for it.

£150 for full administration, and nothing for a Minimal Asset Process. Item 22 of the Bankruptcy Fees (Scotland) Regulations 2018 was substituted on 6 February 2023 so that it reaches only a debtor to whom section 2(2) does not apply.

The fee, and who does not pay it

There is no fee to apply for Minimal Asset Process bankruptcy. The fee that used to apply was removed on 6 February 2023, and the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s own guidance lists no application fee.

That is a removal rather than an exemption, and the difference matters. There is no Minimal Asset Process fee for anyone to waive.

Whether the £150 can be waived lists the qualifying benefits, and the Minimal Asset Process fee question covers why five different figures are still in circulation.

One warning about reading the fees yourself

The consolidated Schedule to the 2018 Regulations does not display item 22 correctly, and reads as though a Minimal Asset Process fee still exists.

The amending instrument is the one to read. SSI 2023/9 substituted the whole item, and its explanatory note says the fee is removed.

Out of the estate and out of what you pay in, not out of a bill sent to you at the start. The trustee’s outlays and remuneration are costs of the sequestration itself.

How the money reaches the trustee

The trustee recovers, manages and realises your estate and distributes it among creditors. What a trustee does sets out the office, and the costs of doing it are met from the same estate.

Fees charged by the Accountant in Bankruptcy for administering a case are set by the Bankruptcy Fees (Scotland) Regulations 2018. Ask your adviser or the Accountant in Bankruptcy what applies to your own case rather than relying on a figure from a commercial page.

Where those costs become visible

Recall is the clearest illustration. Section 30(4) prevents a recall on the ground that you have paid your debts in full until the interest and the outlays and remuneration of the trustee have also been paid.

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.

Section 37A has applied since 25 June 2025. It is a real trap for anyone who thinks a part payment inside six months buys them something.

In practical terms, yes, and it is the largest part. Regulation 15(2) takes your whole surplus income rather than a percentage of it.

How the figure is reached

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.

The calculation takes your surplus above the lower of the published trigger figures for reasonable expenditure and your actual expenditure. Regulation 15(7) means no contribution is due where your income is solely social security benefits and tax credits.

The rules in one table

Note the 48 months in section 91(2)(a) runs from the first payment, and section 93(2) keeps it running after your discharge.

If you cannot keep it up

Tell the trustee first. Section 95 lets the order be varied or quashed following a change in your circumstances, and the trustee must use the common financial tool to reassess it.

A payment break of up to six months is possible, but it is not available on request. Section 96 requires your disposable income to have fallen by at least half, because of one of seven listed changes in your circumstances, and the decision is still a discretionary one.

A break granted under section 96 is a deferral rather than a reduction, because section 96(9) adds it to the payment period. You pay the same total over a longer time.

If you simply stop, the trustee may instruct your employer to deduct after two missed payment intervals, and your employer may then charge a fee equivalent to the one chargeable under section 71 of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987.

A public entry, a mark on your credit file, and restrictions while you are undischarged. They are the part of the price that no fee table shows.

The public record

Your case is entered in 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.

The credit file is a separate record kept by the credit reference agencies under their own published schedules. How sequestration affects your credit file gives each agency’s position and what actually sets the period.

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 figure.

mygov.scot and National Debtline’s Scottish bankruptcy guide both cover the same ground, and how long sequestration lasts sets out when each restriction ends.

The cheapest route to enter is not always the cheapest overall. What each one costs over its whole life is the comparison worth making.

Four routes, four cost structures

A Debt Payment Programme is not an insolvency solution. You repay the debt in full, and what changes is the pressure rather than the balance.

What a trust deed costs and what the Debt Arrangement Scheme costs give the detail on each.

The part that is easy to miss

In a Minimal Asset Process there is no contribution and no dividend to creditors, so the cost is almost entirely the consequences rather than the money. In full administration the reverse is true where you have a surplus.

A trust deed and the Debt Arrangement Scheme both take money for longer than twelve months. The comparison is between four years of payments and four years of payments, not between a fee and a fee.

Where the comparison usually turns

Sequestration against a trust deed turns on your surplus and your assets, while sequestration against the Debt Arrangement Scheme turns on whether the debts can realistically be repaid at all.

That the advice is free, that the fee position has been checked, and that the alternatives have been priced on your own figures.

Why the fee is rarely the real question

Most Scottish applicants pay nothing to apply, between the free Minimal Asset Process route and the two exemptions. Cost is rarely what decides whether sequestration is right.

What decides it is the contribution, the assets and the consequences. Those are the three things to price before anyone signs anything.

Three questions worth asking

• Which exemption from the £150 has been considered, and on what figures.
• What the contribution assessment produces, and for how many months.
• What is expected to happen to anything you own, and when.

Two things a cost page should never tell you

Nobody can tell you in advance what percentage of your debt will be written off. What goes is whatever is left unpaid at discharge, which depends on your contribution and what your estate realises.

Nobody can tell you what a lender will do afterwards either. The published material sets retention periods for data, not decisions about credit.

The advice itself costs nothing

Citizens advice bureaux, council money advice teams, StepChange, National Debtline and Advice Direct Scotland all give it free, and how you apply sets out what the appointment covers.

No approved adviser may charge you for granting a certificate for sequestration. If a firm is charging for the advice the statute requires anyway, compare what a free service says first.