Four years is a long time. Jobs end, rents rise, relationships change and people move.

Here is what to report, what follows, and the one question the Act genuinely does not answer. What a protected trust deed is covers the solution itself.

Your trustee, straight away and in writing. mygov.scot puts it as a duty rather than a courtesy, and the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s information document uses the words right away.

The two statements that create the expectation

mygov.scot’s page on what to do if your circumstances change during the trust deed says you must tell your trustee if your circumstances change, and names losing your job, sickness and being at risk of losing your job.

The protected trust deed information document says that if your financial situation changes you must tell your trustee right away, and that your payments will be reviewed at least once a year.

What to report, and what follows

Note the third row. A pay rise is reportable at once rather than at the review, and what happens if you get a pay rise during a trust deed covers the reassessment that follows.

Your trustee is not there to catch you out

They are administering an estate, and they cannot do that on out-of-date information. Your discharge turns on a trustee statement that you co-operated, which is the reason to tell them early.

The risk lands at the end rather than in the moment. Section 184(2)(a) makes your discharge depend on a trustee statement that you met your obligations and co-operated with the administration of the trust.

The escalation, and it needs AiB’s agreement

Since 1 July 2024 a trustee cannot refuse a discharge alone. Under section 184A the trustee applies to AiB on Form 5A with reasons, and AiB decides whether to agree.

Where refusal is agreed, the trustee must write to you within 7 days with the reasons, confirmation that the debts remain outstanding and your right of appeal to the sheriff, copying AiB within 21 days.

Section 172(2) then means creditors cease to be deemed to have acceded. That is the outcome worth avoiding, and it is what disclosure protects you from.

What is not a proper reason to refuse

The bottom three come from the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s guidance for trustees. Losing your job is not the same thing as refusing to engage.

The deed does not follow your employer, but your obligations do. Tell the trustee the new employer, the new pay and the new pay date, so the contribution keeps arriving and can be reassessed on the right figures.

The reassessment

Section 168(5) of the 2016 Act commits the whole of your surplus income, meaning total income less allowed expenditure, to creditors during the payment period.

Expenditure is measured against the trigger figures published as part of the Common Financial Statement, last revised on 1 April 2025. How trust deed monthly payments are calculated walks through the arithmetic.

Where you pay the trustee directly, a job change is mostly administrative. A new pay date, and possibly a new figure once the income is reassessed.

A new role that asks about insolvency

Check the contract before you accept. There is no general duty to tell an employer about a trust deed, and whether you have to tell your employer about your trust deed sets out where a real duty can come from.

The Act does not say, and no page should pretend it does. Section 174 has eight subsections and none of them addresses what happens to a live instruction when the debtor moves to a new job.

What section 174 does say

Section 174 lets the trustee, after two consecutive missed contributions, request that you instruct your employer to deduct the contribution, and instruct the employer directly if you do not.

Subsection (8) requires the trustee to notify recall without delay after your discharge. That is the only subsection about an instruction ending, and it is about discharge rather than about a change of employer.

The contrast that must not be borrowed as an answer

An earnings arrestment falls with the employment under section 47(2) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987, which is why people assume the same happens here.

A section 174 instruction is a different animal. It is addressed to a named employer under a different statute, and the Act does not say it follows you.

So raise it with your trustee in writing before you start the new job. How trust deed payment instructions to employers work sets out the three forms and what each one does.

If you rent, it is a change of address and a change of housing cost. If you own, the property is part of the estate conveyed to the trustee unless it was excluded, and selling it is not something to arrange on your own.

The two routes, and what a sale does to each

The fourth row is the trap. mygov.scot’s assets and income page states that if you sell a home excluded from the trust deed, any money you are left with after the cost of the sale must be passed to your trustee.

Why that follows

Section 167(1)(b) binds you to convey estate acquired in the four years after granting the deed, and sale proceeds arriving in that window are estate acquired.

Excluding a home keeps it out of the deed. It does not turn a later sale into money you keep, and what happens to the equity in your home in a trust deed explains how the equity is treated.

Joint ownership

mygov.scot states that where you own your home jointly with someone else, the trustee can only take your share of the property equity. Will you lose your home in a trust deed covers the position in full.

Report it, because housing is the one expenditure line with no published trigger figure. Rent and mortgage costs vary too much between households, so the trustee works from your actual figure.

A rent rise is not something to absorb quietly

If the figure in your assessment is out of date, the contribution being taken is wrong. That is a conversation worth having before the payments start slipping.

Where a payment cannot be made, the route is an extension of the payment period under section 168(2)(c), notified to AiB under section 180. What happens if you miss a payment on your trust deed sets out what happens if it gets that far.

Ongoing bills at the new address

Current council tax, rent, utilities, insurance and child maintenance carry on being your responsibility and must be paid separately. Only arrears that had built up before you signed sit inside the deed.

• Give the trustee the new address before the move, not after.
• Redirect post, because review paperwork and asset queries still have to reach you.
• Set up the council tax at the new address straight away, so a fresh set of arrears does not start building.

Declare a redundancy payment, because estate acquired in the four years after granting has to be conveyed to the trustee. On leaving Scotland, the Act sets a connection test at the beginning and says nothing about a later move.

Lump sums

Section 167(1)(b) catches estate acquired during the four years after the deed was granted. A redundancy payment arriving in that window is not automatically yours to spend.

Your trustee decides how a payment is treated. Deciding for yourself is the part that causes trouble later.

Moving away

The sufficient connection test in section 164(1A) is a condition of protection tested at the date you grant the deed, on a one-year look-back. It asks whether you were habitually resident in Scotland, or had an established place of business there, at any time in the preceding year.

Part 14 says nothing about what a move out of Scotland does to a deed already running. Ask your trustee before you commit to it rather than after.

Free, impartial advice on any of this is available from Citizens Advice Scotland, StepChange and National Debtline. Whether to use a free debt charity or a paid debt adviser covers that choice, and our trust deed page sets out how we help.