Advice for mother in law please!

shy-but-need-help

Hello, just looking for some advice/strategy for MIL to deal with her financial situation.

MIL is a home owner with her partner (not married but live together & bought a house in 2004) they did this based on both having full time wage. Partner has recently lost his job (redundancies) so they have gone from £30k to £16k a year into the house. MIL has been struggling to pay mortgage and all the other bills herself as partner can't find a new job (even local agencies aren't taking people on here).

MIL also has £4k in credit card debt (monthly minimum of £120) but she has never told her partner she has this card. She went into arrears recently and DH has just paid her up to date to stop them phoning her (she was not answering her phone and panicing people would call to the house and her partner find out) However she is now unable to make the monthly payments and meet mortgage/other bills at the same time and we can't help her financially as we have four kids and live very much pay check to pay check ordinarily.

When she spoke with the credit card people they mentioned income and expenditure forms to fill out and send back?

Is there anything she can actually do or help she can get (beside tell her partner as she is adament she does not want to do this and mil tends to run when panicked and we don't want that to happen again) can she ask the cards to freeze interest or anything like that? She has no desire to use the cards again or ever.

Thanks in advance

doodledo_2

A good place for your mother in law to start might be speaking to one of the debt free charities.

It may also be worth posting her SOA (statement of affairs) showing all her incoming and outgoings so the lovely people on here can see if there is anyway to reduce her outgoings so she can reach her repayments on the card.

Here is a link to a SOA which she can complete http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html.

edinburgher

Yes, the debt free charities can deal with these sorts of problems in the strictest confidence.

I'd always advise honesty, but I realise and empathise that people have their own reasons for not coming clean about these things.

The income and expenditure forms being referred to are probably very similar to the SOAs mentioned helpfully by doodledo. Basically, it sounds as if they want to see proof/reasons why she can't afford to make these payments.