LILA, Bank charges, Divorce - which order?!

[nikkiandmidgets]

I have a mountain of debts due to breaking up with my husband after my 2 daughters were born and my head being totally messed up as my husband played mind games with me while still screwing around while working abroad.

 

I have been off work for the last 17 months because i wasnt coping well with working\hardly seeing my kids and my mum complaining she wanted a wage to look after the kids and at that time I was struggling to pay everything, let alone pay her a regular wage. She was living with me, the hosue I rented which she lived in too meant she had her own living room and bedroom, and i bought all the groceries and her cigs - and she is a heavy smoker. Anyway i understood my mums views so she got her own place and a job and I stopped work and had to move to a smaller place (another private rental)...

 

I have debts including an Egg loan, credit cards, littlewoods, old mobile phone contract with orange, old utility bills from last property (Gas boiler was faulty and bills were huge and the £80 a month i was paying no-where near covered it)....

 

At moment, 17 months later, i am getting letters from DCA's but nothing further but dreading the day things get worse....money is tight, i want to learn to drive as I stay in a village where there is no employment, and the nearest City which offers decent pay is about 45 miles away and takes a couple of hours each way on bus (service is not that regular outwith core times)....i do have my name down with Local Authoritys and councils for a local authority house but no joy so far. my kids are at nursery 2.5 hours a day and would like to return to some kind of work and also get divorced - am ready to move my life on, but still waiting for my husband who is in asia to find a lawyer and provide me with their details - he argues it isnt easy as he doesnt know when he will next be in scotland and has to meet one face to face to be able to get them to act onhis behalf.

 

Anyway, what is best order for me to go on this - should i try and claim PPI's, Bank charges, credit card charges, then LILA and then divorce, or LILA first? If i do LILA first, would i get any of the money from the claims if they were sucessful or would it all go to my creditors? just this money would help me towards getting white goods and carpeting a property when I finally get offered it, as well as help with removal costs and maybe even help with me getting driving lessons so i could get a jb futher afield so that i could maybe use this as leverage to help in getting a house quicker (i.e. closer to where I work). i ahve no assets or savings - apart from the furniture in my house. Also, at moment my ex has been making regular payments into my account for the ids - he will not be happy if this all goes towards my debts and may stop the payments if this happens - with LILA would i have to make payments to the companies for a certain period of time? Would I then be able to update them if he did stop the payments for the kids (he says he would put the money into bank accounts for the kids for them to get when they were older?)...

 

Thanks for any info and hope this makes some sense....obviously I will see CAB when i decide to go the LILA route (just a bit awkward as dont have easy access to childcare and kids go to nursery in afternoon so with public transport it makes it difficult for me to get to CAB and back and put kids to nursery so would mean i woudl have to take them off nursery if i had to go to CAB and take them with me - woud CAB be okay with that?

 

TAs I said sorry if this is garbled, my brain functions are messed up due to stress\depression and concentration span is poor - new doc at surgery says i can come see her when i feel ready to discuss it further and see how she can help me so bit more postive about that as at moment I worry i couldnt do a demanding job as brain is currently mush!

[Crocdoc]

Phone your nearest CAB and explain your situation, more than lkely they will have ab outreach worker who would visit you at home. As for LILA any contribution is linked to disposable income. Based on the information provided, I would think that the question of any contribution is unlikely

 

I hope this information is of assistance

 

CAB are quite used to children

[BankFodder]

the problem about the CAB is that they do not appear to give people any advice about testing the enforceability of their agreements, about challenging claims or alleged debts in anyway -- and maybe even more importantly, they appear to offer no advice at all about ascertaining whether any part of the alleged debt is comprised of unlawful charges which should be reclaimed.

 

I see from your signature that you have previously started the process of dealing with many of your alleged debts and also of reclaiming charges. It seems to me from your signature that you may have let this all go.

 

I'm not sure that we can advise you on this forum how you should arrange your priorities. This is a matter for you. However, if you have discontinued all of the processes which you appear to have started in 2006, then I would say that a good place to start is to continue them -- or to recommence them.

 

I think that if you start to look at the paperwork that you have on these and start picking up the reins again that you may start to recover some slight sense of control over events and over your life and I can imagine that this could be very therapeutic.

 

It may also substantially reduce your debts so that you start to realise that the situation is not as bad as it seems.

 

It is unhelpful that you run one thread on all of these issues. It is unhelpful to you because you will not be able to receive the specific advice in respect of each particular problem that you would receive if you started separate threads for each case -- each one in its appropriate forum.

 

I would suggest that you open you threads in the appropriate forums and start dealing with the process of testing enforceability of alleged debts and/or claiming back charges.

 

Although it will mean more work for you in the beginning -- writing out each thread, I am sure that the exercise of doing itwill start to put you back in the driving seat.

 

Get started, and we will join in to help you

[nikkiandmidgets]

Yeah i did let them all drop which is a shame as being from Scotland, some are now over 5 years....I will try sortng through all my paperwork and getting each action started again - am lucky i still have the original emails\spreadsheets in a folder...just wish I had kept them going them but I started full time work then after being off for a years maternity and didnt seem to have much time or energy and what I had left, I spent with my daughters!

 

Yes it sounds sensible that if i take action on all my old debts, loans, ppis and charges that it may in fact turn out that my debt is not such a mountain and I may even be able to avoid LILA...I know i have to try to get energy trust to send me out forms for my old gas debt - I never got them in when I tried, and when I left msgs asking for the forms (several times) none were sent out!!

 

Anyway I will see if I can do some paperwork and maybe kick off some threads tonight once kids are in bed! Would be nice to start taking control of some aspects of my life again!

 

Thanks.