Question: I declared personal bankruptcy on Sept. 17. A creditors’ meeting was to be on Oct. 7, but no creditors showed up. I was informed that the meeting had been adjourned. I was told that the trustee will be contacting the main creditor “to see when they are available to send someone to attend the meeting and we will be sending out the notice as soon as I hear from them”. Is this normal? If a meeting was announced and they did not show up, isn’t it their business? Do we have to wait until they do? How many times can meetings be adjourned after they fail to show up?
Answer: It is very unusual for a creditors’ meeting to be scheduled in a bankruptcy. Most bankruptcies, where your total assets are less than $15,000, are “summary administration bankruptcies”, and creditors’ meetings are only called if a creditor requests it.
It would appear that you had assets of greater than $15,000 (actually in your case $10,000, since the rules changed on September 18 increasing the limit from $10,000 to $15,000), so your bankruptcy may have been filed as a “Ordinary Administration”, which requires an automatic creditors’ meeting.
In most cases if no creditors attend the meeting, that’s it. No further meetings are scheduled, unless there is a specific reason why the trustee is requesting the meeting.
We suggest that you contact your trustee and as them to explain why a creditors’ meeting was necessary, and why it’s necessary to re-schedule the meeting. It’s possible that there are valid reasons for doing so, but only your trustee can give you a full explanation.