Insolvency law

The last entry is la décharge du mandataire, and the English word that leaps forward to meet it is already spoken for. « Discharge » is a word of English insolvency, and what it names is the release of the debtor: a bankrupt is discharged, usually after a year, and from that day the debts left unpaid are gone. It is the most consequential moment in a personal bankruptcy, and every leaflet written for debtors turns on that single word. La décharge du mandataire is nothing of the sort. It is what the court grants the office-holder once the accounts have been rendered and nobody has objected: the moment at which he is let go of the job and can no longer be called to answer for it. The English for that is « the release of the office-holder », or plainly « the liquidator is released », and « the discharge of the liquidator » reads to a practitioner as a slip of the pen. The debtor in this list is released by something else altogether, le rétablissement personnel, and that is where « discharge » does belong.