THE BANKRUPTCY ACT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13834, 21 August 1908, Page 5

THE BANKRUPTCY ACT.

PETITION FOR AMENDMENT.

SOME IMPORTANT SUGGESTIONS. • An important petition to Parliament hi being promoted by the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, and business firms in the city are to be asked to append their signatures. The petition is one praying for amendments in the Bankruptcy Act, and sets out that the Act should be remodelled so that while insolvents, as at present, should receive every protection when their conduct is bona, fide, the general public and the commercial community should have their interests safeguarded, and be afforded adequate protection against dishonest traders and insolvents. The petition suggests that a Commission, composed of the senior official assignee in the Dominion, with one or two leading merchants and a similar number of experienced accountants, should be set up for the purpose of taking evidence during the Parliamentary recess, to ascertain in what respects the Act is defective. Since the passing of the Act in 1892 there has been a very large increase in the population of the Dominion, and a corresponding advance of trade, and the Act now fails, it is pointed out, to meet the altered conditions of trade and business generally. That the Act is not considered satisfactory is also proved by the large and increasing number of private assignments to creditors' trustees.

In the course of the petition, a readjustment of boundaries of the districts for which official assignees were appointed, and an increase in the number of the districts are urged. Owing to the difficult legal and commercial questions constantly arising in the administration of estates, the remuneration of official assignees and deputies should be by fixed salaries, the present uncertain income not proving sufficiently attractive for first-class men to accept the subordinate positions.

The time- ha* also arrived, it is contended, for the appointment 01 one or more judges to attend solely to bankruptcy business. Provision should be made securing to creditors their proportionate share of an insolvent's estate, and preventing one or more creditors from obtaining an unfair advantage ovei the others. The. petition also asks that estates in the hands of the Public Trustee should be handed over to the official assignee immediately they are found to be insolvent, as the Public Trustee has not the same facilities for dealing with such estates as the assignee, no)' are the creditors' wishes consulted, and that assignments of estates to creditors' trustees should be registered. The petitioners consider it unreasonable that creditors, or a bankrupt, should be compelled to pay the expenses" of the extradition of a bankrupt. The petition was laid before the Chamber of Commerce yesterday, and it was resolved that it should be signed by the president, and sent round to business firms for signature, and also to other chambers of commerce throughout the Dominion.