Hi,

I am looking for advice please.

At the moment I am heavily in debt with credit cards and for a few years now have been making agreed payments to my creditors on a pro rata basis.

Although no interest is being charged there is no way I will be able to clear these debts in my lifetime without either going bankrupt or an IVA.

I am 67 years of age and an IVA would take me to 73 and having to live on the breadline for the next 6 years isn't how I had planned my retirement.

I have a mortgage and a 2nd charge both on an interest only basis

if I were to sell then there wouldn't be a great deal of equity left.

At current property prices I would be lucky to come away with £8k which wouldn't make much of a dent in my credit card debt.

This would leave me penniless as I have no savings and no personal life insurance.

I had planned to pay off the mortgage by cashing in my stocks and shares but the banking crisis wiped these out and what was left was sold to service my credit card payments following me losing my job on top of everything else.

I would like to sell up and go live in Spain where property rentals are very reasonable and I could manage quite well on my works pension and state pension.

I am not one to shirk my responsibilities and would try to continue paying off what I can but I don't want to start afresh with absolutely nothing.

If possible I would like to keep a £4k cushion out of the sale proceeds of my house for contingencies such as funeral costs as I can't expect my siblings to pay for this and I have no other family.

Most of my debt has been sold to the likes of Arrow Global , Cabot etc.

I reckon they only paid a small percentage for taking on the risk.

Is there any point in me appealing to their better nature and asking them to write off my debts or should I go down the route of an IVA?

If I go for an IVA can I sell my house during it and then go live in Spain and just continue with the payments or would it be best to sell now and then go for an IVA.

Sorry for the lengthy dialogue but as I don't have much of a lifespan left I would like to spend it relatively at peace.

so you didn't stop making those token payments that you were advised to stop years ago going by other threads?

they would be near statute barring now if you had.

whats the state on a valid enforceable agreement on each one?

can you list your debts and who you pay please.

dx

As far as I know they are all enforceable.

Every one of them served default notices and I continued with the token payments as advised by CAB.

The only one I challenged was Capital One when they were getting heavy and they sent me a copy of what I had signed when I took up the card.

I was afraid of losing my house if it all escalated so still paid.

Arrow Global was MBNA Visa £8593

Arrow Global was MBNA Mastercard £7860

Wescot on behalf of Mint £7516

Cabot was Barclaycard £8647

Arrow Global was Abbey £5312

CapitalOne £15335

Arrow Global was Alliance & Leicester £1740

M&S Personal Reserve account £1717

CCA request to each and everyone bar the A+L one as that's a bank account?

its been 5yrs now

lots could have changed.

Hi

I would agree with Dx in that sending a CCA request to the creditors would be a great idea. I am assuming that all the loans and cards were taken out prior to April 2007.

As DX has said, a lot could have changed in the intervening years

As a side note, if you sent CCA requests before and you still have copies of everything you were sent then its possible that others on here would be able to tell you if they are actually enforceable. Just because they have your signature on them doesn't mean that they are enforceable.

As an example I have a Halifax Loan that is not enforecable because it is not set out correctly , another loan for over 10K , well when they sent a response to my CCA request they did not include amended terms and conditions but kindly sent a statement of account that showed default charges had changed. I am 15 months from most of my debts being SB and some most of them I have not heard from in over 2 years

I first ran into difficulty with credit card debts in 2010 and have posted on here before seeking advice for which I am grateful.

I chose to set up affordable repayment plans with the original creditors and they over time issued default notices. Those default notices have now disappeared from my credit report according to the Experian link to MoneySaving Expert.com. I have in actual fact managed to get a credit card to try and build up my credit rating.

All of the original creditors have sold on the respective accounts to the likes of Arrow, Lowell and Cabot and I have continued to pay them. Some of these have since approached me with offers to settle the accounts at reduced rates which up until now I couldn't find.

I am in the process of selling my house and intend to settle abroad in Spain. When it goes through I will be left with enough to clear all the accounts if they don't ask for more than 30% but then will have very little to fall back on for a rainy day.

I am retired and just about manage to get through on my state pension and small works pension.

When I last wrote on here 2 years ago https://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?470920-Debt-write-off-or-IVA&p=4960595#post4960595

I thought I would be left with about £8k but this has gone up £20k.

I was advised to stop making the token payments and send out CCA requests but I do own up to the debts and that is why I haven't gone down that route.

I was wondering how best to approach the situation. I was thinking about carrying on with the payments until I move abroad in January and then notifying them of my move with an offer to continue the payments until I have secured a permanent address as I will be renting?

This will give me a chance to set up Spanish bank accounts and arrange money transfer from my UK bank account.

I don't want them to know how much I have from the proceeds of sale so they can go after the lot.

This brings me to the next question .... can they apply for a CCJ if I am sticking to the repayments?

Your thought and advice greatly appreciated.

More than 4 yrs ago and since you were advised 3 times to throw the morality card out the window

They dont care why should you

All you've done is run the sb date and been obviously cash cowed

If you'd sent the CCA's i bet 90% of you debt would have been..and could still be now..wiped out TOTALLY

Token payment s do not stop legal action

So do you suggest I CCA all of them now or should I wait till I'm abroad?

You've had for 8yrs now

Just go.

Are you saying I should just clear off abroad and not make any more payments? Or don't post on here any more!

its difficult to sometimes understand where you live and what stages you are at.

but the one thing that is clear is that you've been a cash cow for 8yrs now

if you aren't abroad living then you need to address the debts

but that doesn't mean paying them without 1st taking the necessary steps to ensure that each fleecer you pay is legally entitled to mug you.

as in 2016 here and in most of your other threads since 2011 you were advised to CCA request each one...still to this day you haven't...

I really can not stress enough just how important CCA requests are. I CCA'd all my creditors back in 2012 , some came back saying they couldn't find the agreement, thank you your account in unenforceable. Others came back with agreements which were unenforceable and 4 I think came back with agreements that initially looked good.

I stopped paying all of my debts - no moral judgement on my part at the time, purely an economic one although I did become rather evangelical about using the CCA requests - at that time opinions were very divided on how useful they were.

Anyway, out of the 4 that came back with agreements, three are now statute barred and the other, well they took me to court but not only did I successfully defend the case but also had costs awarded. They could provide no evidence a default notice was sent - and I mean non, not even an entry in a log.

So CCA requests can and do work, I am living proof