Collection Agencies

icewarrior57

Hi, I became ill 5 years ago and am unable to work. I have huge credit card debts, (aquired before I became ill), which due to my age and disability I am unable to pay. Three years ago I moved house, hoping to leave the debts behind, and for a while I received letters from collection agencies, (which I returned unopened) then it all went quiet. Recently, I have started to receive letters from collection agents again. Should I move house again? I don't want to as I'm settled where I am but there is no way I can pay the debts. Any advice would be appreciated.

Tixy

Hi

I would never advocate moving to hide from your creditors. Mostly they will find you again anyway.

Do you know if any of the creditors have obtained county court judgements for your debts?

If you are out of work and claiming benefits then you would not be expected to pay all your debts off. You would simply be expected to make token payments to each debt each month (as little as £1 could be okay).

If due to your health problems you are unlikely to work again you could also possibly consider a DRO (if you owe less than £15k) or bankruptcy, you would need to obtain (free) professional advice on this matter.

Are you aware of the rules surrounding statute barred debts? If you have not paid towards a debt for 6years, and have not written to acknowledge the debt for the same time period, then if no CCJ is granted before the 6years are up the debts become statute barred and you can not be made to repay them.
If you were paying your debts up until 3years ago then this won't be any help to you, but if you haven't paid anything for 5years or so you might want to consider trying to hold out until your debts become statute barred.

icewarrior57

Hi, we were paying a token payment to our creditors up until we moved house but as we own the house, (the value of the house is equal to the debt we owe), they wanted us to sell it in order to pay them. If we go for bankruptcy we will lose the house and we can't afford to rent, so we're stuck between a rock and a hard place and it seems as if there's no way out.

Tixy

You say there is no way you can pay off the debts, but yet you have equity in your house equal to those debts.
If you sell the house and pay off the debts then if you still could not afford to rent you could get housing benefit etc from the government.