Estate management
An estate is the wealth(assets and liabilities) that a company or individual leaves behind when the company or individual goes bankrupt or dies. This is referred to as either an estate or a bankruptcy estate.
When a company or person goes bankrupt or dies, the task is to inventory the assets and liabilities. These must be distributed to the survivors or to any creditors.
The settlement is typically done with the help of a lawyer or other trained property law professional who acts as a professional executor.
In legal terms, this process is called estate administration or bankruptcy proceedings.
Who is in charge of the estate administration
When a company goes bankrupt or a person dies, it is the probate court that appoints an executor or trustee to settle the estate.
This executor is typically a lawyer and can act on behalf of the estate.
If a company goes bankrupt, it no longer has control over its assets and liabilities. The owners and management of the business cannot act on behalf of the business without prior permission from the liquidator.
Why is my customers' bankruptcy interesting to me?
If you are a business owner or otherwise responsible for the company's finances, it should always be in your interest if a customer goes bankrupt - and not just because a customer's bankruptcy can mean lost future revenue.
You should be especially aware of your customers' bankruptcy if you have granted credit, loans or otherwise have a financial relationship with them.
In such cases, there is a risk of losing your entire outstanding balance if you take no action.
If a customer goes bankrupt, you should contact the estate administrator with your claim. The executor will include your claim in the overall estate administration and your claim will be included in the final settlement of the estate.
In short, this means that if the bankruptcy estate has money left, creditors, including you, will have their claims paid out proportionally. Note that it is rarely possible for bankruptcy estates to pay the entire claim, but often there is a chance to have parts of the claim covered.
How do you get information about a bankruptcy?
There are several ways to be notified when a customer goes bankrupt or dies.
Information can be found on Statstidende.dk or CVR.dk. In other words, it requires you to actively keep an eye on your customers and their status.
On Statstidende.dk, you can also find information about the executor and thus who is handling the estate.
You can also choose to subscribe to your customers' status by using Collectia's platform Qatchr.dk. Here you can be notified if a customer dies, goes bankrupt, or changes credit status from good payer to bad payer.
