Insolvency: what it changes for your project and your deposit

Bankruptcy records that a company can no longer pay its debts and that its credit is shaken. A trustee is appointed, takes over the company, and the activity stops unless it is continued for the purposes of the liquidation.

Judicial reorganisation is the opposite in its intention: the company carries on working, under the protection of the court, while it negotiates with its creditors. Plenty of companies in reorganisation finish the jobs they have started.

Confusing the two would be the first mistake. The second would be to read a closed proceeding as one that is under way: "closure of bankruptcy" means it is over, and a list copied around without a date makes that entry say the opposite of what it says.

Opening judgments are published in the Belgian Official Gazette. That is the official publication, and it is what makes the information public rather than confidential.

The Central Solvency Register (RegSol) is the electronic register of insolvency files: it is where creditors file their statement of claim and follow the case.

The KBO/BCE carries the state of affairs as a legal situation, in a field separate from the active/ceased status. It is that data, published under licence, that Domara reads — with its date, and without ever rephrasing it as a judgment about the person.

In a bankruptcy, contracts under way are not cancelled automatically: the trustee decides whether or not to continue them, according to the interests of the liquidation. The answer can take weeks, during which the project is at a standstill.

A deposit already paid becomes a claim in the estate. In practice, a private customer is an ordinary creditor, without preference, paid after the preferential creditors if anything is left — which, in a bankruptcy, is rarely the case.

Hence the only protection genuinely available beforehand: paying in instalments tied to observed progress, rather than a large lump-sum deposit at signature. This is not advice about any particular company; it is a description of what happens when a proceeding opens.

Ten-year (decennial) liability insurance, compulsory since 2018 for work on the closed structural shell of a home subject to planning permission, is taken out with an insurer. It does not disappear with the contractor: it is the insurer who remains bound, and the certificate asked for before the work starts is what makes it possible to find them afterwards.

Guarantees given by a manufacturer on a material follow the material, not the installer. They are kept with the invoices and the technical data sheets.

If a proceeding opens while a project is under way, the useful step is a statement of claim filed in RegSol, within the deadline set by the judgment. Filing it is no guarantee of being paid; not filing it is a guarantee of not being.