BR OR power over outgoings & Assets

Jubbly1868

Hi,

After chat with Insolvency practitioner, looks like OH and I have no choice but to go bankrupt. Quite a relief as the decision making was agonising.

We plan to give up our house as we can get much more suitable house in better area for rent that is £300+ less than our current mgage.

Sorry I could probably have found the answer in the mountain of paperwork I have but:

After the OR has looked at your assets etc, do they set your monthly budget? IE: We pay a very large amount of money each month on our 5 dogs. Different debt agencies have said it should only be about £21. Whereas we pay £131 in insurance policies and about £40 in food per month. :eek:

Although we know it is a lot, unfortunately this is non-negotiable. All the dogs require policies and they already have ongoing conditions so we cannot change to another company as these conditions would be excluded. Sadly we were not subscribing to this wonderful website when we set up the Tesco policy for our oldest dog (14yrs) or we would have been able to get a better deal!

Anyway, Im really concerned that OR/Trustee may start dictating what sort of food they have - again they dont have the cheapest due to their various stomach probs... surely it will be down to us to spend less on food/essentials for ourselves (like we do anyway) so we can continue to spend the same amount on the dogs or am i being extremely naive?
Lisa

dalip

The Or allows certain amounts for all household expenditure. Like clothes,food,haircuts. If you choose to spend that allowance(or part of it)on your dogs that is entirely up to you. You are allowed £20 for pets on your SOA,which i think is where your IP is coming from. There is no way the OR can/will dictate how you spend certain allowances.Dx

Jubbly1868

dalip,

Many thanks for speedy response. What is IP again?? That has reassured me. OR only has to look at how overweight OH and I are to realise that there are great savings to be made on food bills etc to allow dogs to continue to live life luxury with us.

Lisa

dalip

Insolvency Practioner= IP. sorry we tend to use a lot of abbrevation on here,save the fingers.lol

Jubbly1868

Right-o. I was being lazy as I could have looked it up so thank u very much. Yep see what you mean about IP (!) now. CCCS said same thing but didnt know if it applied under BR too...

dalip

Yes but i will say that the allowances with bc are far more generous than with a DMP.

For example with my OH DMP they said £400 housekeep was high for 3 adults,whereas when i went bc i was allowed £580 hosekeeping for the same 3 adults.

This is because in bc they like to see that you can maintain an acceptable standard of living without resorting to credit,whereas in a DMP they want the shirt off you back to pay creditors back.lol

Jubbly1868

That's good to know dalip, thx.
Ive been really worrying about what OR will say about rental costs as we plan to give up our house. After re-mortgaging in March of this year, we can no longer realistically keep paying it (£968 mth - int only!), even after declare BR. Also we can rent something much better suited to us (and bigger) for bout £300 less. Pals keep telling me that rent we are looking to pay here in NI is far too much but we have hands tied as trying to rent with 5 dogs near impossible.
Do you think OR consider those difficulties and allow us to rent bigger house if we were giving up our house and thereby saving ourselves approx £300 by renting???

dalip

Thats a diffacult one to predict. All OR's are different and what some allow,others don't. From what i have read on here the OR tends to look at rental costs for your particular area and needs and works it on that basis. I am H/A so that particular problem never arose for me. Maybe one of the other more kowledgable housers might know.Dx

Jubbly1868

Thanks anyway. The CAB person we saw didnt seem to think OR would have a problem but out of all the letting agents we have gone to, only 2 have houses that will allow dogs AND we are negotiating a rental reduction. I dont suppose OR will be very sympathetic about how hard it is to find rental property with dogs but Im not giving them up!!! Thx for support.

dalip

I am behind you all the way,i would farm my kids out but not my dogs:rotfl: check my avatar;)

Jubbly1868

At least you can kennel dogs and leave them in doors alone whilst you go away or out!!! I used to manage military housing and if you could see the damage the kids did!!! Dogs are so better behaved!!!! Ive even offered to send Landlord pics of my house (im very house-proud, & have cleaning OCD!) - im sure he will think me a nut! Oh well, might as well admit to it!!!