French laws around guarantees of loans

My husband and I live in the UK, and own a house in France. In June 2006 we sold a business we owned in France for the 'cost of the loans' due to be
repaid only. At the time of sale, we were guarantors of the loan, and the terms of the sale stated that the buyer had to sign over the loans into her name within 3 months. 2 days prior to this deadline the buyer went into
receivership. The bank loans were frozen, however we found out through a secondary source that next month she will go into formal liquidation, and then we will be liable for the payment of the bank loans. We are dispairing, and terrified of losing our house - the only asset we have. We are in the process of putting our house into our 2 year old son\'s name in the hope that this will save his inheritance. Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves? Do we have any rights?

[able1]

You could try to take equity out of the home and make it less valuable to any creditor.

Thank you for your response.
There is not enough equity in the house to cover the loan repayments on the bar, but the banks have already implied that they will attempt to recover what they can. Unfortunately however we have now been told by the French notaries that it will be a criminal offense for us to pass our house to our son.
We have thought of engaging a lawyer to review the sales agreement with a view to either liaising with the judge liquidating the bar to consider our position or suing the purchaser directly for breach of the sales agreement. Could it perhaps be argued that she has made no effort to transfer the loans into her name during her period of receivership, and therefore had no intention to pay (shafting us royally, as it were, as during that time all bank assets were frozen and there was nothing we could have done - according to both our lawyer at the time as well as the judge in charge of her financial arrangements).
In your professional opinion, would this be another waste of our time and money. Meaning that all we can do is wait for the banks to come after us. It doesn't sound very fair? Do we honestly have absolutely no rights in this? I truly do not want to become bankrupt. I have a son to think about.

[msg]

It would not be a waste of time. There very possibly are provisions in the sale agreement that could help you. It is worth a review.

Can anyone help. We are being put in a position where we will have to repay 90k euro of debts for a business we sold where the buyer was the one at fault for not having fulfilled her side of the sales agreement

Since my original posting, quite a lot has transpired. We were told by our French actuaries we were not permitted to transfer the house to our son whilst there was a court injunction against us! Apparently, unbeknownst to us, one of the banks for whom we were caution on the original bank loan, went to court and had an injunction passed which essentially stated we were the guarantors and were liaible for the loan. We knew nothing about this, but are being hit for the total value of the loan, together with the cost of the legal procedings. We have a lawyer appealing our case, however have been told our case is not very strong as we missed the time of appeal (which had passed by the time we were notified of the court ruling). I am bewildered that they can do this to us.

Also, in the interim, the business went into liquidation, and has - I believe - been sold, although the judge who handled the process will not tell us how the proceeds were split as the business has nothing to do with us! When we took on the loans, the banks were down as having 1st take of any proceeds if anything went wrong. However, from the court papers it doesn't seem as if they have received a single cent, and we are being lumbered with all debts.

And apparently - according to French law - we can't sue the purchaser until the banks have sued us, which means we still have to wait for the 2nd bank to sue us before we can take action against her. By that stage anything could have happened.

Is there anything we can do?