£1 per week goodwill advice plz

jenjakalf

Hi I will try and keep brief Im helping out a family friend details are he lost job few mths back and has 5 cards totalling 25k had them for years never fell behind however after losing job income is:

Him £600p/m from pension
wife £270 part time job

They own bungalow outright but wife is not prepared to release equity as said she would lose money plus she is angry about her husbands debt so not prepared to lose home or sell etc.

They have DMP with Solace paying £300 p/m and are struggling really bad. I just want to know if i try and write too all 5 cards and make £1/2 perweek each goodwill payment can they lose the house AND is there a cance of freezing interest?

Tixy

Firstly rather than pay Solace for a DMP they could switch to one of the charities and not pay a monthly fee. If they cannot afford even that and can genuinely only afford token payments then the charity will recommend that (and help with template letters etc).

£300 certainly sounds excessive given that income but it could be suitable to do a DMP at a much lower level (say only £100 or so perhaps)

Very unlikely to lose the house, in theory they could get CCJs, attempt to get a charging order (although its complicated on a joint house) or could apply to make him bankrupt (to release his share of the equity). These things - even just the CCJs - are not particularly likely by the way just want to mention it.

Best thing would be to get some advice from one of these - http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2077631 and to give notice to Solace (often DMP companies require 4weeks written notice).

jenjakalf

Thanks for the reply Im going to use the templates from cccs to offer goodwill payment do you know what the chances are of freezing the interest??

Tixy

Difficult to say but I'd guess reasonably good in the short term at least.

However if they realise he is a pensioner and therefore is unlikely to ever pay off the debt and they realise he has equity they could try to get at that. Which is why getting professional advice might be a good idea.
If you don't and when you enclose an income & expenditure account make sure it doesn't show the value of the house / any remaining mortgage (which the SoA format we use on here does show).
Do they have any mortgage at all? if not then the lack of that cost or rent may indicate to the lenders that they do have equity though so do try to tread careful in what you show them (although an income & expenditure is nearly always required to get interest frozen).

How long has he been using Solace? have any creditors already frozen interest?

jenjakalf

been using since August last yr and they managed to freeze interest but its soooo expensive where can i find out how much living expenses etc to put in soa for a couple? is there a rough guildline?

Tixy

If you use the CCCS debt remedy tool online then it will give suggested expenses for certain things which should give a guideline.