Trustee's statement in conversion petition: misunderstanding cleared up

Today, the Supreme Court issued an important ruling in the context of a request for conversion of a bankruptcy into a statutory debt rescheduling arrangement. Such a request can be made under Article 15b of the Bankruptcy Act (Fw). Such a conversion request must be accompanied by annexes as included in Article 285 Fw. The declaration formulated in paragraph 1 under f caused problems when assessing whether the conversion request met the formal requirements. In fact, there was often no such statement and the request had to be rejected.

In its judgment of March 13, 2015 (ECLI:NL:HR:2015:589, NJ 2015/157), the Supreme Court therefore formulated the requirement that a request for conversion must be accompanied by a written statement from the trustee showing that the trustee has investigated whether the bankrupt can offer an arrangement within the meaning of Section 138 of the Fw to its joint creditors and that there are no real possibilities for reaching an out-of-court debt settlement.

I have always wondered how an extrajudicial debt settlement could still be achieved during bankruptcy. Fortunately, the Supreme Court now reconsiders this (ro. 3.3.3), calling the previously formulated requirement a "misunderstanding. It is sufficient that the trustee, the Supreme Court considers in the same legal consideration, declares to have investigated whether the bankrupt can offer his joint creditors an arrangement within the meaning of Section 138 of the Bankruptcy Act.