IVA Help/Options

Giant7

Hello

This is my 1st post, so please be gentle.

Last year I agreed to start an IVA with payments of £275 a month. After 5 – 6 months through the first year I fell in to arrears as my girlfriend was pregnant and we needed things for the new arrival. After about 9 months I wrote to the IVA company asking if I could reduce my payments, with the agreement of the creditors to around £100 as my girlfriend would be on maternity leave for 9 months and we’d struggle to make it through the month.

They got back to me 6 weeks later asking for something further in writing, along with payslips, monthly income and expenditure….the usual. I did this 2 weeks later (due to me been on holiday) and sent it back. A further 6 weeks later they rang asking to discuss it then wanted a further up to date letter with promises that if this amendment was successful with the creditors the arrears would be wiped off.

This went on for a while, so much so by son is now 8 month old.

Last week the latest update came asking for a up to date income and expenditure for the meeting and a signature to confirming I’m happy to extend the IVA by 12 months and paying £300!!!!

I feel as though I’ve been messed around. My son now goes to a child minder during the week, my girlfriend is back working full time. It seems my original request was a waste of time and this is just another way for the company to get more money from me.

Or is it just me???

I do want to clear my debt, but at the same time want to be helped accordingly by the company who are suppose to be helping me.

Is there other options available to me, or is the IVA the best route to getting myself back on my feet and debt free.

Charco_2

Nobody on here could possibly say (from this one post) if the IVA is your best option or not but i'm sure you'd appreciate some advice on how to deal with your IVA Company.

Extending the IVA by 12 months may end up inevitable (unless you decide to fail the IVA and go bankrupt - which nobody could really recommend either)... BUT you'll want to make sure that your I&E is an accurate reflection of your current ability to afford monthly repayments! And this is the first thing to discuss with your IP (or his staff).

There are other things to consider too though!

Do you have a property with equity? How much equity? Are you going to have to release this equity or would it be enough to extend your IVA by a year to make token payments towards the equity? You'll not want to extend your IVA twice!

The IVA Proposal belongs to you. It is an agreement in place between YOU and YOUR CREDITORS. The IP is simply the supervisor (referee) now so remember that what he suggests is not written in stone. All you have to do is come up with a proposal that is acceptable to your creditors - and the IP is there to HELP you with that.

Think about the potential dividend you offered to your creditors at the START of your IVA - obviously that will have been adversely affected now but is there a way you can try to make up the difference? Or come close to it still? You CAN ask for a new creditor's meeting to accept changes to your proposal but the closer you try to keep to the original dividend, the more likely it is that your creditors will accept!

skintflint103

Whoa this is getting tedious, again I agree with charco in the points that you need to examine ,if you fail your iva and go bk will you lose your house if it has equity. You will not lose it if you have less than £1k equity after sale costs. If that's not the case grovel to the I.P. if not look at BK (IVA is BK for 5 years, 6 if you can't meet the re-mortgage clause.) You may have to make a payment to Official Receiver for 3 years but BK allowances take all living costs into account. You no longer go in the local rag and you're finished in 12 months. So it may be one option. This coin has two sides look at both carefully. Go to the gov'ts insolvency website it's gold dust look at the bit regards property.

max_pug

This is the same kind of situation I am in right now, I can no longer afford the origanl payments as my house mate has moved out and so rent has gone up but they are failing to see this and are not wanting to lower my payments for some reason, however are very keen on the fact that i now earn £50 more a month now!!!
I thought IVA companies were there to help, however I'm learning very quickly that this is not always the case!!!

Charco_2

Max-Pug, the IP is there to referee the situation. I know they come on like your best friend at the start but in reality they have to wear TWO hats. One that looks out for your interests and another that looks out for the intertests of the creditors... they should be impartial. Most I would say try to cut you some slack but there are those that are closer to the creditors too.

Did I already post on a thread of yours?

Basically when your personal circumstances change you should go and speak to your IVA company again. The IP doesn't have much scope to alter the IVA - because it's an agreement between you and your CREDITORS, not your IP. He can allow a 15% change in repayments without calling a new creditors meeting - which is fine if you lose out on £30 or £40 a month - but if your circumstance change more than that it will require a meeting unless it's only for the short-term in which case you can come to agreement to make up the difference.

Charco_2

one last thing, when you contact your companies, you're speaking to supervision staff. They're looking after your case on behalf of the IP - but that does not mean that your IP actually knows about your specific problems, the staff are there to deal with the smaller issues. However if you do not find satisfaction down this route come back to me and i'll see if i can help you bypass the staff straight to the IP

foreverautumn

max_pug wrote: »

This is the same kind of situation I am in right now, I can no longer afford the origanl payments as my house mate has moved out and so rent has gone up but they are failing to see this and are not wanting to lower my payments for some reason, however are very keen on the fact that i now earn £50 more a month now!!!
I thought IVA companies were there to help, however I'm learning very quickly that this is not always the case!!!

My advice would be to do a new I&E, and send it to your IP. Then discuss it and go from there. If you are not receiving the rent from your friend, that no doubt was included in your last I&E. Your payrise plus some has already been swallowed up. Let us know how you get on. You never know you might get your payments reduced.

max_pug

Well I have asked over and over for a new I & E sheet to fill in, and they have told me ovr and over that it's been posted, however still no forms to fill in!! I'm starting to get very tired with the constant calling and asking for these forms and my payments to be sorted out. I am now in a situation where I am having to borrow money from family in order to get thru the end of the month. The company I am dealing with have said that they can do the 15% however what I am having to pay out is still not covered, and I am still borrowing.
I hate the situation I am in and its starting to keep me awake at night as I went into the IVA hoping to sort out my finance's, but its not working out that way.
I also have another worry in that over December and January I did a fair amout of overtime in order to pay back money that I owed to people, and I'm scared that the IVA company are going to take this extra income into view when my review comes up and that I will end up paying more than what I am at the minute!!! I only did the overtime because of the weather and that I wanted to pay money back to people that I have borrowed from.

foreverautumn

max_pug wrote: »

Well I have asked over and over for a new I & E sheet to fill in, and they have told me ovr and over that it's been posted, however still no forms to fill in!! I'm starting to get very tired with the constant calling and asking for these forms and my payments to be sorted out. I am now in a situation where I am having to borrow money from family in order to get thru the end of the month. The company I am dealing with have said that they can do the 15% however what I am having to pay out is still not covered, and I am still borrowing.
I hate the situation I am in and its starting to keep me awake at night as I went into the IVA hoping to sort out my finance's, but its not working out that way.
I also have another worry in that over December and January I did a fair amout of overtime in order to pay back money that I owed to people, and I'm scared that the IVA company are going to take this extra income into view when my review comes up and that I will end up paying more than what I am at the minute!!! I only did the overtime because of the weather and that I wanted to pay money back to people that I have borrowed from.

Your IP is not being very helpful at all, in fact it is a damn right disgrace. I presume that with you saying rent, then you have nothing to lose by going bankrupt. I would give your IP a call again, tell them if they do not help you and get things sorted out. You will let the iva fail and go bankrupt. Then they will not be receiving their piece of the pie. See if that wakes them up.

Charco_2

Max-pug - your ovetime WILL be taken into consideration so hold some of it back if you can!

The first 10% extra is yours (so if you earn £1000 a month normally and then earned a further £100 then it SHOULD all be yours!)
You will normally be expected to contribute HALF of the rest though (so if you earned £200 more in overtime then you'd have to contribute £50 to your IVA)

Does that make sese?

The point is, if there's no incentive for YOU to do overtime then you're not going to do it!

(could you ask your IP company to email the paperwork to you? When on the phone to them threatening to go BR, you could also ask who their regulatory body is as you'd like to lodge a complaint... that will put a spring in their step!)

max_pug

Charco,

The only reason I did the overtime was because I work in the airline Industry and due to the very bad weather we had I kinda had to stay and see the job out, I would never have stayed otherwise, also I was having to pay people back from where I'm borrowing from them to pay bills/rent due to the fact my IVA company are yet to sort my new payment out, even though I advised them in September that come January I would be paying all bills by myself!!!

And I asked then to fax them today to me ( as they don't email documents) and got to work and there was nothing waiting for me, shock!!! I just feel like I have been banging my head against a brick wall with them!!!

And IF I go the BR route, then I will be making a complaint about the levels of customer service that I have NOT received, I feel this company have given IVA companys a bad name in the way they are dealing, or not in my case with people.