a lot of debt for a redundant man, with wife and kids to support!

[LMF]

Hello

 

We have about £15K of debt, Husband got made redundant in dec and I lost my job in Nov have been job hunting since 150 plus jobs applied for. With two young children and a mortgage to pay for.

 

With our current situation we have more outcome than income nearly twice as much and that is before paying our debts off.

 

We have continued to pay our debt but now we are struggling financially and I was wondering if there is anything we can do to help ourselves.

 

We have sent a letter explaning our situation to the creditors offering a token gesture of £1 a month, but in all honesty we cannot afford that, but what can we do?

 

I am scared we will lose our house and my family will be made homeless.

 

Please help.

 

LMF

[matt5983]

Hi LMF, you've dont the right thing in coming here and asking for help.

Are you or your husband receiving JSA?

Can you break the debt into whom you owe money to and is it secured or not?

 

Some more knowledgeable people will be along shortly

[citizenB]

I am sure there will be people popping in with advice, meanwhile, you might want to have a read of

Sequenci's debt blogs which are linked in my signature and you will find lots of information in those.

[LMF]

Hi LMF, you've dont the right thing in coming here and asking for help.

Are you or your husband receiving JSA?

Can you break the debt into whom you owe money to and is it secured or not?

 

Some more knowledgeable people will be along shortly

 

 

Yes my husband is getting JSA at the moment waiting for them to process my information.

 

We have done a financial statement and all the debt owing is unsecure. It was £18k but we contacted them and explained that we were struggling to pay the debt off, they all froze the interest, and agreed to what we could afford. so we have got it down to just under £14k in 2 years, but now we are stuck.

 

We do not know if they will accept the £1 a month, but we have stopped the direct debits and set up standing orders for £1. Really worried they are going to kick up, but what can we do?

 

Thanks for your response.

LMF

[sequenci]

Hello there. Take a look at my blog, it's very useful!

 

Are you in rented or mortgaged accomodation?

[LMF]

I have started reading your blog, so much to read and not knowing where to start.

 

We are paying a mortgage but we are insured which is helping us with the house.

 

Waiting to hear from the council regarding council tax.

[sequenci]

Token payments are the way to go.

 

Complete a financial statement and consider using the sample letter which offers a token payment which you can find within this pack:

 

http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/england_wales/pdf/self_help_pack/credit_debts.pdf

 

It might take several attempts to get the creditors to agree, stick to your guns and ensure you send them all a copy of the budget to show them that your offer is fair and reasonable.

[LMF]

Token payments are the way to go.

 

Complete a financial statement and consider using the sample letter which offers a token payment which you can find within this pack:

 

It might take several attempts to get the creditors to agree, stick to your guns and ensure you send them all a copy of the budget to show them that your offer is fair and reasonable.

 

 

Yeah we have done all that, the financial statement, and letters of £1 per month and of course stopping DD's but setting up standing orders.

 

Will this stop anyone reposessing the house and taking our things away??

 

We sent them letters etc last week, do we phone to chase up the letter to ensure they received it, or leave it?

 

Many Thanks

LMF

[matt5983]

Yeah we have done all that, the financial statement, and letters of £1 per month and of course stopping DD's but setting up standing orders.

 

Will this stop anyone reposessing the house and taking our things away??

 

We sent them letters etc last week, do we phone to chase up the letter to ensure they received it, or leave it?

 

Many Thanks

LMF

 

Agree with sequneci, with regards to your belongings or a repo, your along way off with that (need to attend court,then lose,then they apply for warrant and if granted then yes, but its a long way off) saying that im not as sure as theres a house that you have, some more knowledgable people then me will know...........

 

You will get the standered threats etc and thats all they are until you do actually have to attend court, but like i said thats along way off.

 

There is alot of people on here who know the ins and outs of the law so please do not worry, just start with the letters and token payments and see what happens. But be prepared for some nasty letters to come through the post and never call them and keep all correspondence in writing, make sure you keep a copy of what you send them as well.

[matt5983]

Forgot to add, do u have a bank account that is linked with any of them who owe money to, if so you will need to open another account away from them. This "safe" account will be where everything is payed into and out, but you owe them no money

[LMF]

Yes we have a 'safe account'

[matt5983]

good, well just do what your doing and see what happens

[cymruambyth]

Yeah we have done all that, the financial statement, and letters of £1 per month and of course stopping DD's but setting up standing orders.

 

Will this stop anyone reposessing the house and taking our things away??

 

We sent them letters etc last week, do we phone to chase up the letter to ensure they received it, or leave it?

 

Many Thanks

LMF

 

Hi, just to set your mind at ease, before your house can be repossessed, you will have to be taken to court, lost your case, have further action to obtain a charging order and then even more court action to have a forced sale.All this will take a long time and as long as you do not ignore things (easier said than done) and follow procedures, your home should be safe.

You will have support from CAG over letters etc. The important thing is to keep your priority debts under control, never mind the rest.

[Harl]

Are you suggesting that there is a chance that this lady could find her home repossessed on the back of credit card/unsecured debts, bearing in mind that her insurance company are paying the mortgage? Because my understanding from reading these forums was that the chances of that were virtually zero in dealing with unsecured debt.

 

I am not a lawyer, but I would have thought the Courts would take an extremely harsh view of any company that tried to force the sale of a property over 14K of unsecured debt as it would effectively mean that there was no difference between secured and unsecured debt. However I have read some other posts in other parts of the forum which seem to indicate that you should take seriously any threats to your home (where you have equity in the property), which in my view is reason enough that you might be best advised to speak to a solicitor about your problems.

 

As both you and your husband are eligible for JSA you should also be eligible for some form of Legal Aid. Failing that I would recommend speaking to the CAB.

 

Also, make sure you are or have applied for every possible Government benefit, you need to cross-check the advice you receive from the DSS with someone like the CAB to ensure you have been given details of all the benefits you may be entitled to.

Edited May 26, 2011 by Harl
Concern that LMF's home maybe at risk and so she should seek professional advice.

[Ell-enn]

If any of the unsecured creditors did take court action, then the judge would look at the income and expemditure and very likely agree that they are indeed trying to service the debt albeit at a very low amount. So I would say that it is very unlikely that a judge would agree to a charging order on the property. He would take the view that it is perfectly possible that the debtors would find new employment in a reasonable amount of time and be able to increase payments to their debts.

 

Where people have made no effort to contact their creditors to explain their situation and offer token payments, that the situation becomes more dangerous. As the insurance is paying the mortgage I think the house should be safe.

[cymruambyth]

I don't think anyone is saying that this home will be repossessed for an unsecured cc debt. However the poster does not understand the processes and appears concerned over immediate loss. A rough idea of the court process which appears to be a long way off in this case was given.

Cc debts are taken to court, there are CCJs and there are charging orders. This does not always happen but it does and can be a real worry. The likelihood of a sale in these circumstances is remote.

In addition LMF is worried about 'things being taken away'. These are threats from DCAs and banks and do scare people because of ignorance of the process and because we assume that if these things are threatened they occur and are easy to achieve.

[matt5983]

Thanks for popping over ellen, bit of clarity helps.

 

If all the OP was worried about things being taken away then were along way from that if ever to be honest, hopefully Tingy can pop in when he's back next week, what he does not know about these issue's you can put on the back of a stamp !

[Ell-enn]

In addition LMF is worried about 'things being taken away'. These are threats from DCAs and banks and do scare people because of ignorance of the process and because we assume that if these things are threatened they occur and are easy to achieve.

 

That's correct - DCA's have a bad habit of trying to scare people into paying by putting scenarios in their letters that may happen, but are preventable if the correct advice is sought.