Credit card companies and debt...

phleggers

The short story is - my mother has just revealed to me that she is in horrendous debt. At first she told me it was 20K. Fine. I sat down with her and we went through each card/loan/od - and it amounted to 30k. Ok. I got her to contact CCCS and talk to them and get some advice on how to pay. I read their booklet, which includes a breakdown of what she owes to who, and the real figure, it turns out, is 35k.

OMG!!

So my question to you folk is this - she is nearly 60, on incapacity benefit and unable to work. She has a 30K mortgage on her home with an endowment/life policy which is virtually worhtless - she pays 110 quid a month for it and it won't pay half her mortgage when it matures. She also owns a piece of land which, in a better market, maybe be worth upwards of 100k. At the moment I doubt it's worth anything much.

So she has accumulated all this debt, has no 'income', but has (maybe) assets. I would like to know if the cc compaines and banks will accept terms whereby she pays a small monthly amount with little or no interest. If so, how do we go about arranging this?

She's already hooked up with a company called 'no debt now' who claim to have done this by charging her 150 quid a month for 20 years(!), but in her first statement they haven't arranged anything with half the creditors but are charging her what amounts to 30% APR for the trouble! Obviously she is stopping this arrangement.

Any advice would be much appreciated.