Meeting Your Insolvency Trustee
Why You Need to Meet With Your Trustee in Person
Once you have decided that you need professional debt assistance, you will need to meet with a bankruptcy trustee.
While you can always contact the trustee by phone anytime during your bankruptcy, the initial consultation will be a face-to-face meeting.
Meeting Your Licensed Insolvency Trustee is important for many reasons.
The only exception to this is if you live in a very remote area where there is no trustee office for over 100km.
In this case you can conduct your consultation over the phone.
It is important to have a face to face meeting with your trustee to discuss your debt situation.
Preliminary discussions by phone or email are fine but the initial consultation should be with the trustee at their office.
Just as you need to take your car to the mechanic to have them properly diagnose the problem with your car, your money problems are the same.
You need a personal meeting with the insolvency trustee to get complete advice to getting out of debt.
Why You Need to Meet With the Trustee in Person
Generally, the reason you need to meet with the trustee in person is so you can bring all your paperwork and documents to the meeting.
The trustee will want to see your credit card statements, car loan documents, copies of your mortgage and any other debts you have.
You will also have to bring your pay stubs to determine your income, as well as statements on your assets, like your RRSPs.
The trustee will find it hard to advise on whether you will lose your RRSPs if you go bankrupt, or whether an alternative like a consumer proposal might be better for you.
Finally, the trustee would like to meet you to get a feeling for your issues directly from you.
The trustee will want to solve all of your money problems and debt worries.
Whether you are worried about your wages being garnished, receiving collection calls, or losing your home if you file bankruptcy, the trustee wants to ensure they have the full picture and how they can solve your problems.
Trustees are in the people business.
They like to meet with people to get a full understanding of their debt and worries.
They want to help you get out of debt.
Feeling Comfortable With Your Trustee
It is also important that you meet with your insolvency trustee.
It is important that you feel comfortable with the trustee, since you will be dealing with them on a very personal matter.
Therefore, it is important that you feel comfortable with the trustee.
You want to be able to ask questions and get easy to understand answers from your trustee.
The initial consultation meeting is free, with no obligation, and is conducted in a relaxed and informal but professional manner.
The trustee and their staff will be friendly and sympathetic.
In person meetings with the trustee are helpful for you and the trustee so speaking with a friendly, local trustee is always your best bet.
