Help! My friend is locked into something

alunp

I did post similar in another forum but got no replies.

My friend is in debt and is locked into a car lease for the next 18mths which is costing over 300 a month.

She needs to get out of it but the lease company won't let her.

Her only options they said is carry on paying it, or give up the car but they say she must still pay what she'd committed to.

What can she do?

Old_iron_balls

hmmmm I think she needs to read every single detail of the terms and conditions.

How has she aproached the lease company ?
The pen is sometimes (always, i find !) mightier than the sword.

Robert_Sterling_3

For how many months has she already paid the lease?

southernscouser

alunp wrote:

I did post similar in another forum but got no replies.

My friend is in debt and is locked into a car lease for the next 18mths which is costing over 300 a month.

She needs to get out of it but the lease company won't let her.

Her only options they said is carry on paying it, or give up the car but they say she must still pay what she'd committed to.

What can she do?

Thats a difficult one because she has commited herself to a contract. Do you have anymore details such as why she needs to get out, how much she owes etc?

alunp

Shes approached them by phone. She no longer has a copy of the contract but she has asked for a copy and its on its way.

alunp

its a 3 year lease. she took it out 18 months ago. her situation in terms of job, health, relationship has changed dramatically since then so she can no longer affrod to pay it.

alunp

Yes the reason she needs to get out is that she used to be working in a job that gave her a fab car allowance. When she left that job she lost that so started to struggle. Its left a massive hole in her finances.

She has other debts too so isn't in a good place financially, plus she has split from her husband, and is working in a job with no sickness pay at just the time that she has a major health problem which is forcing her to take off lots of days off for hospital appointments.

It seems to me that if she could ditch this enormous commitment of over 300 a month then she'd be ok and could keep her head above water, even though it'd still be a struggle. But there just seems no way out. Surely leasing companies must have some alternative strategy. Surely these scenarios arent THAT uncommon?

black-saturn

It doesn't look good I'm afraid. She signed a legally binding contract which would last for 3 years. When she gets her copy of the contract look for a get out clause, but I'm not holding out much hope. Other than that is she covered by insurance? The insurance might cover her for things like loss of earnings and a change in life circumstances. Other than that you could try giving us a list of her incomings and outgoings so we can advise her where to cut down to get extra money to pay off the debt. Good luck!!

James240

i Know with Car loans u can give them back once u have paid Half the total cost of the loan but im not sure if this applies to leases or am i barkingup the wrong tree?

ivyleaf

My son had similar problem and, like James says, they told him he could give it up once he had paid at least half the outstanding amount.

southernscouser

alunp wrote:

Yes the reason she needs to get out is that she used to be working in a job that gave her a fab car allowance. When she left that job she lost that so started to struggle. Its left a massive hole in her finances.

She has other debts too so isn't in a good place financially, plus she has split from her husband, and is working in a job with no sickness pay at just the time that she has a major health problem which is forcing her to take off lots of days off for hospital appointments.

It seems to me that if she could ditch this enormous commitment of over 300 a month then she'd be ok and could keep her head above water, even though it'd still be a struggle. But there just seems no way out. Surely leasing companies must have some alternative strategy. Surely these scenarios arent THAT uncommon?

She needs to find out if she can sell the car while still oweing money on it! Normally you can't, but you never know. If she can what she could get for the car would hopefully cancel out the debt. Or like James said, see as she is halfway through the term whether they will take the car back and cancel the agreement.

Perhaps you could say that she has no way off paying this and will be entering into a debt management plan so it would more benificial to them to take the car now!

Is she claiming statutory sick pay. It's not much but it's better than nothing?