Has anyone been taken to Court - Please Read!!

Lodge

Hi Everyone.

After reading a thread on here earlier about being taken to Court by creditors it got me thinking........

Like many on here I'm doing my own Debt Management Plan - ie I'm coming to arrangements with my creditors to stop interest and allow me to make reduced monthly payments etc.

I have 8 Creditors and 6 have agreed reduced payments and frozen or reduced interest, two have been passed onto Debt Collection Agencies, who have also allowed me to come to a payment arrangement.

In total I have around 30K of debt spread between the eight creditors.

Will they (in your opinion / experience) at some point get fed up of my small monthly payments (they are getting around 50 quid a month each) and take me to Court to try to get their money?????

The one I am really worried about is Lloyds TSB Credit Card because I owe them 9K (Yikes!!) and the payment plan ends next month and they say it won't be extended............... Or is this their usual line to scare me?

I would love to know if anyone here has been taken to Court even though they are making regular payments towards their debts??

Please share your stories and experiences so I know what I've got to look forward too!!

Regards.

D.

GardenLover

Just bumping this one for the clever ones to help with as I'm in a similar situation and I'd like to know too...

Lodge

Can anyone help please?

paper_clip

I struggled on arranging reduced payments on my own for a while but started to stuggle when we got twards the end of the 6 month agreement term we had with many of our creditors, northern rock, egg and moorcrofts were the least helpful. I got to the point again when I was dreading the phone ringing and the postman, I bit the bullet in the end and got help from Payplan who have been fantastic. Despite their help however Northern Rock still took us to court for a charging order.

It seems to depend on what mood your creditor is in, NR started getting really stroppy with us when they were at the hight of all controversy. We owed the about 12k and were paying £50 under the agreement we had made ourselves, after payplan helped get our budget sorted out we started paying aroun £160, despite the increase they still took us to court.

After reading many posts on here it seems very difficult to me to be able to tell exactly when/if a creditor will start court action.

Bargainfinder_3

Surely if they do start to threaten heavily, that is when you can contact cccs or someone like that to get their support and authority behind you?

It may be that banks feel they can intimidate individuals; but if it gets to the point where the banks wont "let you" do your 'own' dmp, would you feel ok about doing one with a company?

I'm by no means an expert, so hopefully someone else can help All the best, BF x

THE_LONE_RANGER_4

i know this may not help when i was in debt very few took me to court most sent to dca some sold marbles took me to court for 3k i was paying marbles dca £50 when they took me to court i reduced it to £5per month spite on my part i admit it , any way it was one of my last debts to be paid off by the time it came to them being the only debt it was still around 2 and a bit k i asked them for an early settlement figure they halved it, i wrote back knocking another 300 off they accepted , to be honest i was now in a good position to have paid the lot i do not feel guilty as over £800 was in fees etc etc , SO my point is if they take you to court drop your offer to the minimum ,as well as that it goes of your file after 6 years whether its paid of or not .

Lodge

Thanks for the replies guys!!

Keep 'em coming!!

kalojac

i had a Lloyds debt was for around £1,400 (mostly charges), I was paying £5 a month through CCCS and every 3 or 6 months I would get a letter saying that they were no longer willing to accept this figure as payment. The CCCS only do reviews around every 12 months, so they received a copy of the same budget they previously did, things sometimes seemed worse but they still pestered us. I would phone them and tell them my situation had not changed (I usually got a really horrible person on the phone who made me feel terrible), and that I couldn't increase the payments at this time. The kept taking the payments, they can't take blood from a stone, and its better getting £60 a year as opposed to £0.

My advice to you is to keep strong, you can only pay what you can pay, don't be bullied into an unrealistic figure.

Eventually 3ish years later, I paid £330 as full and final, like a previous poster said I did have the money to pay of the amount in full, but it was all charges, so I didn't loose any sleep over it. Good luck.

Lodge

So, reading between the lines, am I safe to say as long as I make regular payments to my creditors / DCA's then Court is not likely?

Does it make a difference as I am a home owner with equity in my property?

rog2

Lodge wrote: »

So, reading between the lines, am I safe to say as long as I make regular payments to my creditors / DCA's then Court is not likely?

That is a bit of a generalisation, Lodge, but what can be said is that if a creditor does take you to court, then the fact that you have been making regular payments, especially if they are based on your ability to repay, will assist your case in any 'judgement' that the court may make.

Equally, the fact that you are a Home Owner, with equity, is only going to be of interest to your creditors if they are unhappy with the payments that you are making and wish to take a charge out on the property, or, and this will generally depend on the amount of equity that you have, a creditor wishes to petition for your bankruptcy.
Neither of these 'scenarios' is going to happen 'overnight' though, and you will, usually, have sufficient time to take professional advice before it actually happens.