Is this a sign?

When my wife and I decided to close down our business, we chose Wednesday 9th May 2012 as our last day of trading. This holds no significance other than our current rent period finishes on that date.

Today I was checking my calendar and noticed that the 9th May is 'LIBERATION DAY' on the islands of Guernsey and Jersey. Is this a sign? Is this going to be the day we become liberated? I'll let you know in a weeks time.

Things have again been fairly quiet over the past week. The only point of interest being a letter from my landlords solicitor pointing out to me my obligations regarding the lease on our business premises and advising I take legal advice. So, nothing I didn't already know. I did manage to find a solicitor who kindly gave me an hour of his time for free (Yep I did say for FREE.) He confirmed I was pretty much screwed regarding the lease in terms of not being able to get out of it unless the landlord takes pity and releases me from it. He did advise however that the landlord does have something called 'a duty to mitigate his losses' which basically means he can't just leave the property empty without making efforts to either sell it or rent it back out and then expect a court to order me to stump up eleven years more rent. I'm not sure this makes much difference to our position or not, but it's useful to know.

I have had some mixed advice on what happens to the lease if I filed for bankruptcy. One train of thought suggests that the bankruptcy will only take into account any monies owed in rent arrears at the date of proving and therefore the landlord could still chase me for any future monies owing, whilst someone else believes that the bankruptcy will take into account all monies owed and all monies that could be owed for the remainder of the lease. This small point could prove important if I eventually decide to go down the route of bankruptcy.

I decided to forego my weekly back, sack and crack wax this week to join the Bankruptcy Association in the hope that they can answer the lease question for me.

All my creditors will get paid in May and then we will begin defaulting on them all in June. Someone suggested that if I know I'm going to default then why wait until June. Why not keep a few more quid in my pocket and default in May? Well it just doesn't sit right with me I'm afraid. I have the money to pay them in May and pay them I will. When all is said and done, I owe all these institutions money and they deserve to be paid what they're owed if I can afford to pay it.  This will give me approximately a month to get my act together and sort out a plan for tackling my creditors initial contact. Also by that time I should have a firm idea of our benefits based income and should have in place a completed Income/Expenditure form.

Emotionally we're both a bit up and down, myself more so than my wife. I have a taste of what it must be like to be bi polar, as when we're up it's like we've been taking illicit substances and find ourselves in fits of laughter at the silliest things. But when we're down, we're searching the back of the sofa looking for enough change to buy a bottle of Jack Daniels and packet of paracetamols.

Maybe these feelings are normal, maybe they aren't...

On a final positive note, my blog has hit the 1000 views mark. So thank you to all of you who are following our 'Journey' and if just one person gains any benefit from it then it's all been worth the effort.