In this video, Lucy Zilio talks with Richard Killen on Richard Killen & Associated 25th Anniversary.

Richard, a Licensed Insolvency Trustee (LIT) talks about more and more people with debt challenges choose a consumer proposal over bankruptcy in Toronto. Watch the video for more information.

In this video, Richard Killen, a Licensed Insolvency Trustee in bankruptcy in Ontario talks about if the boss can find out about the bankruptcy.

The only time that a person’s employer is officially told, that they have gone bankrupt or that they have done a consumer proposal, if they have been sued and garnished by somebody, and your employer is having to deduct money from your pay to send to the court because of the garnishee. The person going bankrupt is basically going bankrupt or doing a consumer proposal, that’s one of the big thing that they are trying to stop that garnishee. A bankruptcy and consumer proposal will do that but isn’t going to stop if we don’t tell the employer to stop it. Yes, the employer would get notified in that case. The other thing I can think of is offhand, and where we would have this kind of contact with an employer, is if we had to contact an employer to find out some information that is of important to the creditors. Like for instance, say you have a profit sharing plan at work, and your employer is the only one who has the details of it, the profit sharing might be money that belongs to the creditors in a bankruptcy, you see the trustee has to verify this information. Now, there are different ways of verifying it, we might be able to verify it by having you get the information and providing it to us so there is no direct contact with your employer. We prefer to do it that way as long as we can get the facts. Generally speaking, an employer is not, I can’t even remember the last time that we contacted an employer when there was no garnishee involved.

If you are uneasy about your bankruptcy you should definitely visit a licensed insolvency trustee so that you will be given an advice about consumer proposal and debt problems.

In this video, Richard Killen, a Licensed Insolvency Trustee in bankruptcy Toronto answers the question most homeowners ask, which is “Will I lose my home if I go bankrupt or do a consumer proposal?”

Because you may have debt problems, you may be concerned with losing your home and most people figure that “if they go bankrupt they are never going to keep their house.”  And for most people, that is a very traumatic thought, however, it can be avoided.

I found that over the last 10 years, very few people who own a home with equity have to lose the home if they don’t want to. They can find a way to keep it. The only way to keep it is to deal with the matter of equity. The trustee is responsible for obtaining the equity from the property in order to pass the money along to the unsecured creditors. They have the right to their money.

Therefore, if a person or family wants to keep their home, they’re going to need to arrange for financing or to pay the creditors. Of course, it depends on how much equity there is in the home. If you really want to keep your home, generally you can. You can keep it whether it’s a bankruptcy or proposal. In fact, if it’s a consumer proposal your home equity is not up for grabs. This really only applies to a homeowner declaring personal bankruptcy.

If you are a homeowner and considering a debt solution, I encourage you to call our office. Why lose sleep wondering what will happen. Your initial meeting is free, and in that meeting, we will explain all of your options so you may make an educated decision on the best option to obtain debt relief.

On October 21st Richard spoke at a seminar given to employees of credit unions throughout Ontario. Titled
Bankruptcy/Consumer Proposals.