Business account personal guarantee

[Kazza40]

Help!!! We don't know what to do and someone else might have been in this complicated situation. Right, the Bank of Scotland gave us an overdraft and we signed personal guarantees for £50,000 back in October 2003. Since then the business has been officially dissolved with Companies House. Now, some 5.5 years later, theyve called in the personal guarantees and threatening a bankruptcy proceedings if £32,000 is not paid within 14 days! We've got endless paperwork to justify their total incompetence during our banking time with them and endless apology letters from them. We moved to another Bank and they closed our accounts. This meant we could not repay the debt because they closed our bank account despite us requesting that we continue to make monthly repayments. We have no idea how they've come to the £32,000 but it seems that interest/charges etc. are still be accrued each month. What should we do???

[Sapphire]

Re: Business account personal guarantee

I would suggest that you try to come to some sort of repayment plan with them. If as you say you have signed a personal guarantee in my experience it does mean that you do in fact 'owe' them the money.
In the early 90's my OH signed a personal guarantee (Nat West) for his business for £30k and we are now paying it back at £350 month and they want us to increase the payment, hopefully in a few months time we will be in a position to increase it greatly, at the last count with interest we still owe them £58k. We did and still do ask them to freeze the interest but it falls on deaf ears, its worth you asking but don't expect a miracle please.
It doesn't matter if the company was limited or ceased trading or whatever, its a personal guarantee and it has to be paid back.
I'm sorry I couldn't give you any better news I'm afraid, but someone else might pop along with some other advice for you.