Volume 7
<nobr>Consumer Insolvency and Discharge of Legal Debt</nobr>

Prziklang

The Insolvency Code (InsO) came into force on 1 January 1999. Its adoption is the preliminary result of more than twenty years of discussion about a reform of insolvency law.
One focus of the reform is the introduction of a consumer insolvency procedure for highly indebted private individuals that is specially tailored to small-scale insolvencies.
A large part of the public attention during the reform discussion has focussed on the introduction of the legal institution of legal debt discharge, which was previously unknown in German law. This gives honest debtors the opportunity, under certain conditions, to be released from the previous thirty-year period of liability following bankruptcy proceedings.
Due to the considerable impact of the reformed legislation on consumer insolvency and legal debt discharge on the position of debtors and creditors, there were controversial discussions about the relevant regulatory sections before the InsO came into force, some of which continue to this day. This paper provides an overview of the procedure, initial practical experience and the status of case law on key questions of interpretation.

To the overview