France - British Expat Forum

My wife and I have a personal loan with a bank. Unfortunatelly we are unable to keep up the repayments. We are trying to sell our house. The loan is not a mortgage and is for about a tenth of the value of our home. We have offered to pay a reduced amount each month but the bank refuses to negotiate with us, just sending us threatening letters.
I am 63 and my wife has just retired. We use our property for gite holidays.
Is bankruptcy an option to keep our home and if so, how do we go about it?

Hi, and sorry to hear of your predicament.

To get meaningful and sensible advice you'll need to provide more details. For instance, was the loan taken out with a French or a British bank? Was it secured against your property? You say you use the property for gite holidays - do you run these through a business, and if so is the property in the business's name, or your own?

The impression I have is that declaring personal bankruptcy in the UK is a pretty miserable affair with lasting effects. I don't know how it is in France.

But this sounds like the sort of question for which you really need professional financial advice - which unfortunately we're not qualified to offer.