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Our Year in Bankruptcy, and a big thanks to the forum.

Well where to start talking about the roller coaster year that we have just been through, an apology for the length of this post might be a good place!, i am sure that many people on here can relate to pretty much everything that i write, however if this little post helps just one person i will be more than happy.

let me give you some idea of the kind of debt we were in: we had £116,000 of secured debt (Mortgage and secured Loan) and £40,000 of unsecured debt (made up of personal loans, credit cards, store cards and finance) you will also notice that i dont go into detail about howe ended up in the situation we did, the reason is that every single case is different, things that seemed important to us may not be to someone else, if you are really interested you could take a look through my older posts.

This site and particularly this board is infinitely more valuable than many people realise, not only is it a source of knowledge, its also a place where you can come and just sound off, or a place where you can read about people who are in the same situation, or even read about people who may be in a worse situation than you simply to make yourself feel better (i did this a lot, and i am kind of ashamed to admit that i did this but there you have it)

The beauty of this place is that its non-judgemental, you can come here and ask those questions that seem like a huge deal to you and you will always get an answer, isnt it funny how we get it into our heads that we are the only people who have ever gone through money troubles and no one on earth fully understands what we are going through...thankfully there are others who have been through the same thing...they reside here :-)

If it wasnt for this forum i seriously do not believe that i would still be with my wife, and i wouldnt be able to live with my amazing kids, i am not saying that MSE made me love my wife again or anything like that, i am saying the whole process we went through allowed me to see that i still loved my wife and that arguing over money is stupid and pointless...and thats all my wife and i seemed to do.

I would come home from work and we would start arguing, we didnt do anything together because we didnt have any money, we didnt do things with the kids because we didnt have any money, all we did was sit in front of the PC and juggle balances on credit cards and try to find amazing new ways of getting out of debt.

Now everything has changed, after weeks and weeks of reading about the options that we had, after speaking to the kind people at national debtline and CCCS we decided that Bankruptcy was definately the right thing to do, the only thing that bothered us was losing our house, however lets face it, it really wasnt our house it was the mortgage companies and after them it was FirstPlus's.

Looking back it was a complete no brainer to declare ourselves bankrupt, the situation we were in was never going to get better, no matter what angle we looked at it from it looked bad, that said we did not miss a single payment through it all, everything was up to date, we just simply did not have the means to live our lives, quite often the wife and i would go without food for days on end simply because our little boy needed some shoes, i would make up ridiculous excuses so that i could use my dads car a few times a week simply because we did not have any money to put fuel into mine, hell we have all been there i am sure.

After speaking to the CCCS and National Debtline and getting advice from this forum we booked our court date, it was 5 weeks away (1st April 2009) and we set about working out all of our finances and filling in the online forms, my wife found this whole process incredibly frustrating....she hated the way the forms were worded, she didnt seem to be able to understand what they talked about, luckily you can save your progress and come back to different sections which was a great help.

Then we came to the dreaded SOA, this proved to be more difficult to work out, again because of the way it is worded, and again this forum proved its worth, i asked about 20-30 questions about the SOA as well as looking at other peoples posts to get little bits of information, eventually i managed to work it all out, on paper it looked good, it looked like we had a surplus of about 30 per month, so no IPA.

We also had to deal with telling family and friends what we were about to do, my family were amazing about it, i think mainly because they had been through their fair share of money troubles over the years, my wifes family were not so understanding, they are quite well off and put a lot of stock into people who arent a drain on society and people who dont bring shame on themselves, it took a lot of explaining but we got there with them in the end.

Our friends were a different kettle of fish, our closest friends seemed to simply accept it, and if anything were curious about the who process and also very ignorant of it too, other friends were either disgusted, entirely understanding but to this day a little bit wary of the subject, one thing i have learned is that talking about money/debt to anyone seems to make people very very uncomfortable.

Well court day arrived, we set off extra early to grab breakfast at a nearby macdonalds (with £10 that my wifes mother had given us) when we arrived at the court the security guard directed us to where we needed to be and we sat down in a large office much like a post office with counters, much to our amazement a couple who we know were already in there seemingly trying to negotiate the bankruptcy fee, we felt embarrassed/ashamed, but they didnt seem to mind, they were very aloof about the whole thing.

We were called up by a young man and he went through our papers (which he commented were perfect) and took our payment, then asked us to go into the next room and wait until the judge could see us, he said there was a 30 minute wait and that the OR would contact us within the week, indeed there was a 30 minute wait...our names were called and we went in to see the judge, he made a couple of notes, looked at our statement of bankruptcy, said that clearly this was our best option and declared us bankrupt....he even said enjoy your debt free life!

Coming out of court and walking back to the car we didnt even speak about it, we were really just in shock...that was it, thats what all the worrying for 5 weeks was about, mixed emotions isnt a phrase i would normally use, however some of the emotions we felt were shame, relief, guilt, happiness and sadness all rolled into one.

We received a call from the OR later that day asking if we could make ourselves available 4 days later for a telephone interview, we did and they rand 4 days later at the exact time they said they would, the young chap i spoke to said that he had thoroughly read our forms, everything seemed to be in line with only a few discrepancies that he would like to go over.

Questions were asked about where the money had gone, i explained that the secured debt was used to improve our home, the unsecured to basically live and switch debts about etc etc, he seemed entirely satisfied with my explanations, i asked if we could keep our cars he replied yes, he told us he didnt see a reason why an IPA would need to be instigated, he felt that we were borderline, although after a bit of haggling he agreed that my SOA was correct, he had overlooked some benefit or the other.

He didnt need to speak to my wife as everything had been covered in my interview, he said that with any luck the OR would agree with his verdict and we wouldnt need to hear from them again.

Now came the stress of moving into our new house, because we didnt have any money i did it all in my car with the exception of the large furniture, i made about 40 trips but over the space of one weekend we had managed to move everything in, we said goodbye to the old house which we were going to wait to be repossessed.

Now the phone calls really started, we were getting on average about 20 calls a day from our creditors , sometimes as late as 11:30 at night, sometimes as early as 6am, eventually we disconnected the phone line and used a mobile phone instead, this was all going on even though the OR had contacted them and we had sent our bankruptcy forms to them....many of them sent us SOA forms to fill in, which obviously we ignored.

Then we hit a lull, the phone calls seemed to just stop after 2-3 months, no more letters nothing, it all felt too quiet and we started thinking about the old house and what was going to happen with it, i wrote to Cheltenham & Gloucester and asked when it would start proceedings to repossess the house, they replied that they were not interested in the property until we had missed at least 6 payments, this would lead us into late november/early december.

We received a letter from Cheltenham and Gloucester on the 28th November saying that they were applying to the court for repossession of the property, the hearing would take place on 18th January 2010, and again they asked us to fill out an SOA for them...we politely declined.

Login details came through for Possession Claims Online, this is where you are given a chance to counter any information that the people claiming against you have made, we simply wrote a general response outlining our position e.g bankrupt, that we were happy for the mortgage company to take possession of the property as we had already told them on many occassions and that FirstPlus had second claim on the property.

A couple of days before the possession hearing we got another set of login details for possession claims online, this time it was from Firstplus, who wanted to take possession of the property!, i replied with a general statement again, giving them the other claim number and stating that we were happy for the mortgage comapny to go ahead.

The 18th of january came, repossession day!, i turned up at the house 20 minutes early just to check around and make sure that the house was open for the baillif to gain entry, the baillif turned out to be a young gentleman of about 24-25 he thanked me for opening the house up and said that there was nothing else for me to do, i walked away and must admit that i did have a tear in my eye, this was like the final nail in the coffin, the last loose end to tie up...and boy was it a biggie.

This is a shortened version of the years events, there have been many ups and downs, but i believe that we are stronger for everything that we have been through, and although we do have money to spend now we still dont seem to be living the lifestyle that we should be, it still feels like we are treading water.

Emotionally it has been a long long year, but one with much fewer arguments...especially about money, its been great to see the kids looking so happy, yes people do talk about you, yes rumours go around but we came to the realisation long ago that none of those rumour mongers know your circumstances, none of them have ever felt how we felt every single day thinking that we were failing at life, not giving our kids the life they deserved because of bad circumstances/choices/luck.

The stigma attached to bankruptcy is a strange one, but no one feels it more than the bankrupt person believe me, the guilt and shame that we felt was massive, every single day i think about the debt we walked away from and feel guilty about it, i know that i will never be able to forget about it, the london gazette and law see to that.

Funny how a person convicted of manslaughter or rape gets anonimity or a new life, but a person who is a bankrupt is forever reminded of the fact.

Please remember that bankruptcy isnt for everyone, and it certainly isnt the easy way out that some people would lead you to believe, however in our case it was the right/only option and one that saved our marriage and sanity.

Thank you Money saving expert and everyone involved with the forums, just being here means a lot.:T
:grouphug: hehe it always makes me chuckle
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Comments

  • dojoman
    dojoman Posts: 12,027 Forumite
    Thanks for sharing that with us :):):)
    :pB&SC No. 298
    Life`s Tragedy is that we get OLD too soon
    and WISE too late!
  • :T

    Aww, as said above, thanks for sharing that.

    Wishing you and your family all the very best for the future.

    :beer:
  • IF
    IF Posts: 34,349 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Thankyou BDB1, Your post is inspirational to us all, as most of us are still on this roller coaster and still gripping on!! I'm so glad you stayed with your family as that would have too much to bear.

    I wish you lots of luck and love.15wl0g5.jpg


    If wishes...x
    "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride"
  • Great post and insight BDB 1 :T
  • mscfsb
    mscfsb Posts: 32 Forumite
    Thankyou BDB1 for a very honest and open post. Glad that your still together with your family. We are just starting out on that journey. All the best
  • icm_2
    icm_2 Posts: 55 Forumite
    Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm sure it will help us all, especially in those dark moments.

    ICM
    ICM
    __________________________________________
    Bankrupt 4th March 2010 --- AD 4th March 2011

  • I have just started the BR process and having read your post you obviously have a good wife there. I was in a similar position and could have paid off all debts with an 8 year jont DMP. However when the cards had run dry and i informed my wife she decided after a week of deep thought that she decided she wanted to end our 2 year marriage. (Cant even afford a divorce after seeing a solicitor!) hence the need to file for BR. Asked about an IVA which is not an option!!!
  • Rupert_Bear
    Rupert_Bear Posts: 1,303 Forumite
    Thank you for sharing your experience with all of us BDB1. Myself I have never been in that position but with change of circumstances who knows.

    You and your family were very brave and wish you the very best for the future.
  • Thank you so much. My husband and I were just like you endlessly arguing and juggling finances. We are still in the 'treading water phase' but are already so much happier, knowing we will be able to provide a loving happy home life for our 2 young daughters. Congratulations on getting through such a stressful difficult time. Very best wishes for you and your family's future.
    fred x
  • BDB1
    BDB1 Posts: 106 Forumite
    Rather than make a new post i thought i would add to the end of this one...

    Today we have been automatically discharged, i still cannot believe that it has been a year. :j

    I have just text the wife with "Happy bankruptcy automatic discharge day", she text back with "i have just crashed the car into the wall outside the house" obviously i rang her to make sure everyone was ok to be greeted with "april fools"

    Jesus what a horrible trick to play, but she did say that she only did it because i had april fooled her!

    On a more serious note we are looking forward to progressing with our lives now without the constant worry of if the OR would ring etc etc.

    I would also like to express my sympathy for people who are having money troubles at the minute, it may not feel like it but there is light at the end of the tunnel believe me.
    :grouphug: hehe it always makes me chuckle
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