Which route you take is not usually a choice either. The eight conditions in section 2(2) decide it, and if you meet them the application proceeds as a Minimal Asset Process.

Here is how the two differ on the points that change your experience of the process. How a Minimal Asset Process works covers the shorter route on its own.

Yes. A Minimal Asset Process is a sequestration awarded under section 2(2), and Schedule 1 to the Act then modifies how the rest of the Act applies to it.

What that means in practice

Your estate vests in the trustee either way, and the consequences people worry about apply either way. Schedule 1 removes the parts of the process that only make sense where there is money to collect and share.

So the difference is administrative rather than a difference in kind. That framing matters, because the register entry and the credit record follow both.

Where the two diverge in practice

Every row in that table is a consequence of Schedule 1 rather than of a separate Act. Strip the modifications away and the same statute governs both.

What it does not mean

It does not mean a Minimal Asset Process is a soft option, and it does not mean full administration is a punishment. Full administration exists so that people with a home, a higher debt level or a surplus income are not shut out of bankruptcy.

A Minimal Asset Process needs all eight conditions in section 2(2). Full administration on a debtor application runs on section 2(8) instead, and it can also be started by a creditor.

The entry tests side by side

Both sets of conditions are in section 2 of the 2016 Act, and whether you are eligible for a MAP works through the eight conditions one at a time.

The two £3,000s, and why they get muddled

Full administration sequestration has a minimum debt of £3,000 under section 2(8)(a). That figure is unrelated to the vehicle disregard, which happens to use the same number.

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).

One is a debt floor for the longer route and the other is a vehicle disregard for the shorter one. Keeping your car in a MAP deals with the vehicle figure in full.

A creditor cannot put you into a MAP

There is no creditor petition route into the Minimal Asset Process. A qualified creditor is one owed relevant debts of at least £5,000, a figure in force since 1 October 2022, and that petition leads to a full administration.

The apparent insolvency founded on must have been constituted within four months before the petition is presented. So a creditor route into bankruptcy is always the longer one.

The advice is free on both routes. A Minimal Asset Process has no application fee at all, and full administration carries one that most applicants do not pay.

The Minimal Asset Process fee was abolished

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.

The instrument is regulation 4(3)(c) of the Bankruptcy Fees (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2023, which replaced the fee item in its entirety and whose explanatory note says the Minimal Asset Process fee is removed.

Commercial pages still printing £50 or £90 are quoting a repealed figure. National Debtline and StepChange both say the same thing, and so does the Accountant in Bankruptcy.

The full administration fee, and who does not pay it

Full administration sequestration carries a £150 application fee, and that is waived for people receiving certain benefits or assessed as having no surplus income.

That waiver reaches most people who use the route. The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s own 2025-26 figures record more than nine in ten debtor applicants paying no application fee.

Advice is free on both

Citizens Advice Scotland, StepChange, National Debtline, Advice Direct Scotland and most council money advice teams do this work at no charge. Neither route requires a paid provider.

The cost that is not a fee

On a full administration your contribution is the real cost. On a Minimal Asset Process there is no contribution, which is the whole point of the route.

There is one cost worth knowing about on conversion. The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s guide for MAP debtors warns that a case transferred to full administration triggers additional administration fees which delay discharge until they are paid.

A debtor contribution order is made in every sequestration, because section 90(1) requires one. In a Minimal Asset Process section 90(4) lets it be fixed at zero.

How the full administration figure is worked out

It is not a percentage. Regulation 15(2) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Regulations 2016 takes your whole surplus income above the lower of the trigger figures for reasonable expenditure and your actual expenditure.

Regulation 15(7) provides that no contribution is due where your income is solely from social security benefits and tax credits. The default payment period is 48 months.

Two rules people are not told about

Section 93 makes the obligation to pay continue irrespective of your discharge. So a contribution order can outlive the bankruptcy itself.

Section 94 lets the trustee instruct your employer to deduct the contribution where you have failed to pay for two payment intervals. The employer may charge a fee for doing it.

What replaces all that in a MAP

Nothing, while the case remains a Minimal Asset Process. You still have to report income changes, money received and inheritances, and whether a MAP stops a wage arrestment covers what happens to deductions already running.

In a Minimal Asset Process the home question does not arise, because owning land is an absolute bar. In a full administration your whole estate vests in the trustee, including heritable property.

The family home in a full administration

Section 112 gives a three-year rule. At the end of three years beginning with the date of sequestration your interest in the family home reverts to you, unless the trustee has taken one of the listed steps.

Section 113 requires the trustee to obtain the relevant consent, or the sheriff’s authority, before selling any interest in the family home.

Cars and savings

The £3,000 vehicle figure is a disregard inside the Minimal Asset Process asset calculation. It is not an entry test and not a general protection.

Section 2(3)(b) opens with the words for the purposes of subsection (2)(c) and (d), so a qualifying vehicle is left out of the sum rather than exempted from the estate.

Savings are treated more strictly on the shorter route. The Accountant in Bankruptcy treats savings totalling more than £1,000 across accounts as failing the criteria, where a full administration has no entry cap at all.

That does not mean the money is safe on the longer route. It is brought into the estate instead, and how the asset tests are measured sets out what counts.

A Minimal Asset Process discharges automatically at six months and cannot be deferred. A full administration normally discharges at a year, and the trustee can refuse discharge where the debtor has not co-operated.

The comparison in full

Neither register figure is a statutory period, because there is no retention rule in the Act or the regulations. How long a MAP lasts explains which of those periods are fixed by statute and which are not.

The parts that are identical

Both go on the Register of Insolvencies, which anyone may inspect. On credit files, mygov.scot, Citizens Advice Scotland and National Debtline give six years from the date the bankruptcy begins for either route.

Both also affect the same roles. It is an offence for an undischarged bankrupt to act as a company director without the leave of the court, and mygov.scot names Justice of the Peace, MP, local council member and insolvency practitioner, while saying its list is not complete.

Yes. Paragraph 2 of Schedule 1 lets the Accountant in Bankruptcy end the MAP modifications, and the case then continues as a full administration for the rest of its life.

What triggers it

The listed circumstances include your total assets exceeding the prescribed figure and an assessment that you are able to make a contribution. Both are measured at any time after the application is made.

Watch the figure. Paragraph 2(5)(a) reads £5,000 on the face of the Act, and regulation 14 prescribes £2,000 in its place, which lines up with the entry test.

You are not simply told after the event

The Accountant in Bankruptcy has to notify you of the circumstances it considers apply, and you have 14 days to make representations before it decides.

There is then a 14-day appeal to the sheriff. If the sheriff grants the appeal, the case stays a Minimal Asset Process.

Which route fits

There is no better or worse here, only fit. If a bankruptcy of either kind is not right, a protected trust deed or the Debt Arrangement Scheme may be, and a trust deed against a Minimal Asset Process compares the first of those.