1 year ago we paid a deposit to a catering company for a wedding in January 2018. The company was run by a husband and wife. The husband was the sole director of the company, while the wife took care of running the business and booking events.

The marriage broke down and the husband placed the company into creditor voluntary liquidation in November 2017.

Although the husband was the director of the company, he did not maintain any financial records and as a result I was not notified that the company was in liquidation. 

The wife continued to trade under the same business name after liquidation and solicited the balance of the payment before the wedding to a different bank account and then failed to show up to the event.

If I had known that the company was in liquidation, I would not have made the final payment.

Looking deeper into the situation it appears that the wife has a string of unsatisfied CCJ?s against her name and is claiming that she has no money or assets. I think if I brought a claim against the wife, she will never pay.

Before taking this to small claims court, I am trying to establish if my argument is reasonable against the husband to claim for our loss.

As a company director the husband had a duty to maintain financial records including maintaining a list of deposits paid into the company for future events. If he kept to his legal duty, he would have known that I was a creditor of the company and subsequently would have notified me of the meeting of creditors. Because of his failure, I subsequently was defrauded by his wife.