bankrupts and court costs

Carawaystick

Say a Bankrupt man trying to live in a bog standard house lost a case at the high and appeal court and was ordered to pay costs.
Where in the list of creditors do the legal fees fall?

Is it just a rote process to award the costs or has it any real point?

hullaballoo

Sorry no one else answered this, don't like seeing unanswered threads lying about!

In general, the legal fees are paid from the estate before anything else - even before the revenue commissioners. I cannot remember exactly what the order of priority is but I think that the only people paid before lawyers in a bankruptcy are any outstanding wages owed to employees of the bankrupt. If this is incorrect, I am sure someone will point it out.

Next comes revenue, of course, then ordinary creditors are paid from the residue. The residue obviously isn't enough to cover the debts so a certain amount is paid to each creditor depending on the scale of the debt. This is done as a percentage effectively. If you go to the bankruptcy list, you will here the official assignee refer to dividends of x cent in the euro.