Attachment of earnings order

lottysmum

Hi there,
I've got an attachment of earnings order awarded against me. I filled in the income and expenditure form that the court sent to me and I offered to pay the spare amount I had left but the court have sent me an order requiring me to pay much more than that and it'll only leave me about £30 a week to live on! Surely this can't be right. What's the point in going to work! I know I can appeal and I'm planning to do that but is there a minimum amount of money per week that they have to leave you with for living expenses?
Thanks to anyone who knows the answer.

Tixy

Hi

I'm not totally sure about this but perhaps there were some items on your expenditure form they disallowed which means they feel you have a greater surplus than you have calculated.

When you say £30 to live on do you mean to include food etc?

Was this a priority debt such as ctax? if so they may have given it priority to be repaid above any unsecured debts, which again could be the reason it seems high. In which case if you don't have enough to live on and don't have any luxuries that can be cut you might need to consider looking at ways to reduce what you pay to your unsecured debts (eg a debt management plan).

RAS

You probably need to speak to the court to get an idea of what elements of the I&E they have accepted.

Fiddlestick

lottysmum wrote: »

Hi there,
I've got an attachment of earnings order awarded against me. I filled in the income and expenditure form that the court sent to me and I offered to pay the spare amount I had left but the court have sent me an order requiring me to pay much more than that and it'll only leave me about £30 a week to live on! Surely this can't be right. What's the point in going to work! I know I can appeal and I'm planning to do that but is there a minimum amount of money per week that they have to leave you with for living expenses?

What do you class as a living expenses and is that £30 including food?

lottysmum

Yes, that's all I'll have left for food/shopping/clothes etc. I think I've got an idea by the first reply though. I think it's classed as a priority debt so basically what they're wanting me to do is pay the priority debt and sort something else out with my other debts so that I have more living expenses. They've given priority to that debt over and above any others so I'll have to default on the others to be able to pay the priority one! I'll be phoning the court tomorrow to clarify but I think that's going to be the explanation. Thanks to you all for your comments.