IVA and redundant!

1Bewildered

Hello all
Can anyone offer any advice please? I took out an IVA in Oct 07 as I had un-secured debts of £27k and I was only ever managing to pay the interest. I don’t own my own house and don’t have any assets. I’m paying £390 per month to the IVA now and have been managing this well and never defaulted.

The problem is that I’ve just been made redundant from a well-paid job that I’ve been in for 10 years. I’m getting a good redundancy package and am un-sure where I stand with this in terms of my IVA. I phoned the IVA company to inform them of my change of circumstances and they said they may need to take some of the money from me. I pointed out that if they did that and I couldn’t get a job, I’d be living on nothing, except benefits. They relented and advised me to keep up the current payments and just phone them when I get a job. Is this normal and the best thing to do?

I won’t get a job earning as much money because my skills which allowed me to earn the high wage I was on, are not transferable. So I guess I'll end up asking the IVA company to re-think my payments. I’ve never been out of work, since I’ve been old enough to work and I fear that I may struggle now.

It could be a chance to change my career for the better and do something I enjoy more, maybe retrain, but it’s come at a really bad time. My boyfriend and I were hoping to start a family soon, you see. I was single when I took out the IVA and met my partner shortly after. Luckily he didn’t run in the other direction when I told him about it!

Obviously with my current circumstances, we might need to re-think the family plans. I’m worried because I feel time is running out for me. I’m now 35….The plan was for my partner to buy a small place on just his salary in a few years when the market has bottomed-out and then we could get something together when my IVA is over, using both our salaries. Do I just say, what-the-hell to the financial stuff and have kids while I can? Or shall I hold out another 3 years until my IVA has finished?

I’m lucky because my partner earns a lot of money but I don’t want to be dependant on him :eek: or ruin his life with my debts and having to fund a family life on just his wage. I know that there are plenty people worse off than me but I’m very confused and would appreciate some guidance. I didn't really think about these things when I took out the IVA.

The redundancy was only announced about a week ago. My company are providing a careers service but I won’t have access to that until the consultation period is over on 18th June. Am currently on garden leave.
Thanks

Sparx71

Im in the same boat. I have decided to deposit some of my redundancy money into the account I use for the IVA, which is a seperate account not used for anything else, and that will pay the direct debit for just over 2 years. They're not having all of it, I worked hard for 20 years for that!!

pammie39

hi there
i am in the same boat, my husband is being made redundant soon.we both have iva's, my wages will only pay some off the bills, we were hoping to pay some of our direct debits in full.

our iva company said they wont 50%of his redundancy pay!!!!

not sure what would happen when he can't pay his iva. has already missed 2 payments.

1Bewildered

Thanks for your responses. I'm going leave enough money in my current account to cover my iva for a year or 2 and use a different account for everything else. Cheers for that tip.
Pammie - will your husband's IVA company not show any flexibilty with payments? Sometimes they give you a pay break..
Good luck getting through this. I think this kind of thing is always really scarey but it might open up new opportunities in the long-run.

PNPSUKNET

"my skills which allowed me to earn the high wage I was on, are not transferable" , why are they not, wasnt gained by crawling was it?

pammie39

1Bewildered wrote: »

Pammie - will your husband's IVA company not show any flexibilty with payments? Sometimes they give you a pay break..
Good luck getting through this. I think this kind of thing is always really scarey but it might open up new opportunities in the long-run.

hi thanks for this, i haven't heard of a pay break before, will ask about this.
as with your company letting you off paying them most of your money, how do you do this ?
if our iva company take 50% of my husbands redundancy money then our mortgage wont get paid or alot of our bills.

any more advise will be great thanks