Hello Ivy,
Thankyou for your response. Trying my best to nutshell this for you as it is very involved, I went voluntarily bankrupt in May last year as a very bitter relative sided with another creditor (even though I had been paying her debt off) and issued court proceedings to send me bankrupt. 3.5 months went by with no problem and then the other creditor who we had an unresolved dispute with and who also owes us more then we owe him, paid $10,000 to a registered trustee to destroy our lives. Using the law as a guise, my husband and myself have been lied to, mistrusted, treated with contempt, insulted, and I went into depression over this. From the onset it was an obvious conflict of interest as the trustee ignored all proven lies from the creditor who paid him, and it is collusion between the creditors but we didn't know what a trustee could do. We have a 12 year old boy who constantly sees me crying. There really is much to this and we have been put through the ringer and it won't stop. A friend has paid so far $8,000 to an insolvency solicitor who only acted in defence with no resolve. The trustee ignored anything our solicitor stated and treated his correspondence with contempt.
The trustee is insisting on acquiring a piece of embroidery I did many years ago which is of the greatest sentimental value to me, also as I had a go at trying to market this embroidery technique (with no success so far), it is also a tool of trade. It is an embroidered image of my son's eye. After initially trying to get help from AFSA, we didn't get far as we felt the Regulations person in my state was not helping at all and appeared to be siding with the trustee. The solicitor eventually suggested we formally complain to AFSA which we did, but it is now very apparent the AFSA Regulations person is siding with the trustee. We had 3 opinions from art valuers stating the value was very negligible but they are being ignored - even by the AFSA person.
The personal creditors KNOW that losing this creative item will destroy us. It means too much to us.
The trustee has stated if we don't hand it over we will go to prison for a one year. We need to do something but we feel we have nowhere to go. We need to go to court so someone who isn't the trustee's 'buddy' will hear us out. For weeks we read everything we could find on rules of conduct of a trustee and feel he has broken many of them.
What is the best thing we can do now? Is it very costly to go to court and represent ourselves? Also we feel that this is not what bankruptcy is supposed to be about. We are both unemployed, me because of health reasons and my husband is 62 years old, and feel that this is not what bankruptcy is all about. This has consumed our lives over the last 6 months and is taking its toll.