Help Please - Self-Employed and Bankruptcy

justwanabefree

Hi,
I have been reading lots of wonderful advice on hear for several weeks but still have questions I am sure you can help with. My OH and I are both self-employed. We have been in an IVA for just over 3 years- debt of approx. £50,000. In May 08 our mortgage payment increased by such an amount that we could not afford both the mortgage and the IVA payment. We therefore put forward a proposal to our creditors that on the sale of our house we would give them a full and final payment to end the IVA- full equity minus legal costs. This was agreed and we stopped the monthly IVA payment. Although we had priced the property sensibly for a sale we could not foresee the size of the downturn in the housing market - which means we could be waiting a long time to sell.
In Sept. 08 OH incurred another debt following legal proceedings of £31,500.

Although the IVA supervisor is looking at possibility of including this in the IVA it is very unlikely that the claimants will accept a tiny dividend from an IVA settlement.
We have therefore decided that our best option would be to go bankrupt ourselves rather than wait months and months for one of the creditors or IVA supervisor to do it.
I want to put up an SOA for you to look at but am a bit confused as to what we put down as our income after tax. What I mean is we are both trades people who have business costs such as advertising, liability insurance, NI payments, vehicle running costs etc. Do we put down our "drawings" as our income after tax. All our vehicle costs are treated as business costs, so would not usually come under our household monthly expenses.

Sorry this has gone on a bit - wanted to give you a bit of background.

JWBF:o

Simpsona

Hi Justwannabefree,
Im similar circumstances to you, both of us selfemployed and we are confused as to what would be included to? Scarey when we started writing all down but like you we have advertising packages with yell and bt, Web hosting contracts, lease hire equipment, both seperate business too so there is virtually double of everything! Sorry I cant answer your questions but will be watching and hoping someone else can.;)

justwanabefree

thanks Simpsona
it seems that all forms are always geared towards employed & un-employed. We must be the forgotten relations

Simpsona

Well hopefully we wont be forgotten for too long! lol;) tbh if all the advertising and leases dont get inc in BR I'm in deep ****!:eek:

HEADACHE

The company you took out the IVA with will probably be your trustee.Beware they will savage your assetts so prepare yourself.My trustee gave me poor IVA advice and then bankrupted me in order to try and get my house.Luckily houses dropped in value so he got nothing.Be very careful,if I had my time again on this I'd avoid bankrupty.Ask if you can extend the time of your IVA,try and to do this otherwise your businesses will be carved up and you'll spend so much time writing letters,accounting for things etc.And your trustee will go through all your old bank accounts and look to realise your assetts.My opinion is to try and avoid bankruptcy.Im a few weeks from discharge and it nearly drove me under.Last October I went to a great party,it took me ages to get my self confidence up,but did so,had a great time too.On the way home I cried all the way back on the train,wondering what I'd done with my life,not having anything,drained of confidence and jealous of so many other people at the party.Xmas was hard too,but its cos im on my own.