Help - Calculating my income for SOA (DRO)

Ginger_Love

Probably a familiar story to most people here.

I started with one credit card trying to build up a credit rating, this snowballed to 7 creditors over four years and has grown to almost £10,000.

To add to our worries I recently came out of work and I'm unable to pay my debts.

I contacted payplan who have suggested that my best route is a DRO. I am currently trying to put together an SOA for my creditors to see what spare money we have to make payments and to determine whether or not we can go down the DRO route.

I have a question:

The debts are all in my name not my wife's, how should I calculate my income? Do I put the total household income including child benefits etc... or do I just calculate my sole income such as JSA?

(Please note my wife was a stay at home mum so there is no income other than benefits at the moment).

IF

Hi GL and welcome, I'm sorry don't know much about DRO SOA's, I would post this on the DRO thread.

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Best wishes
If...x

fatbelly

Hi

It's probably a jolint JSA claim so I'd suggest doing household income and household expenditure. The categories for monthly expenditure are:

Rent (£) 0
Ground rent and Service charges (£) 0
Mortgage (£) 0
Other Secured Loans (£) 0
Mortgage Endowments and MPPI (£) 0
Building & Contents Insurance (£) 0
Pension and Life Insurance (£) 0
Council Tax (£) 0
Gas (£) 0
Electricity (£) 0
Water (£) 0
Other Utilities(Coal, Oil, Calor Gas) (£) 0
TV Licence (£) 0
Magistrate Court Fines (£) 0
Maintenance or Child support (£) 0
Hire Purchase / Conditional Sale (£) 0
Child Care Costs (£) 0
Adult Care Costs (£) 0
Monthly Total Phone (£) 0
Monthly Total Travel (£) 0
Monthly Total Housekeeping (£) 0
Monthly Total Other Expenditure (£) 0

Obviously if you put a figure against some of these (mortgage etc) it would raise questions - and there are trigger figures that your intermediary will try to keep within.

Ginger_Love

Thanks for the responses, I appreciate your help.

Fatbelly, with regards to the joint breakdown I'm a bit concerned that I won't meet the £50 limit for the DRO. Having not finished our full calculations I suspect it would be closer to £70 a month in surplus if I really tighten the belt.

However a significant amount of this is child benefits which people have suggested is not be be considered part of my income as it's set aside for the children's expenses?

Sorry if these are silly questions but I'm out of my comfort zone here, never been in financial trouble before and I'm not handling it too well.

HappyMJ

Only your income is taken into account and as that is JSA you wouldn't be expected to pay any part of that towards debts. The child benefit should be used towards childrens expenses such as clothes and groceries so is also unavailable for debt repayments. Your OH won't be expected to pay any part of your personal debts and you will still need to contribute towards something household expenses before contributing to debts.

dojoman

I would do as IF has suggested, you may get more help in the DRO tread.

fatbelly

Ginger_Love wrote: »

Fatbelly, with regards to the joint breakdown I'm a bit concerned that I won't meet the £50 limit for the DRO. Having not finished our full calculations I suspect it would be closer to £70 a month in surplus if I really tighten the belt.

However a significant amount of this is child benefits which people have suggested is not be be considered part of my income as it's set aside for the children's expenses?

Child Benefit is regarded as income, as are Tax Credits.

The difference between a surplus of £70 per month, and one of £50 is less than a fiver a week.

I am sure that your intermediary will be able to get you under the limit, and it is them who will be presenting your inc/exp, not you.

If you want to post your total monthly income (weekly x 52 divided by 12) and your expenses in the categories I listed earlier, I'll give it a once-over.

fatbelly

HappyMJ wrote: »

Only your income is taken into account and as that is JSA you wouldn't be expected to pay any part of that towards debts.

Under a DRO, you are forbidden from making payments to your debts