Help!!!

NeverAgain_2

aus,

I'm finding your last question a little hard to follow, but the general problem you have is you are worth chasing because you have an asset which is worth more than the debts.

No one can make you take out a loan, but if your creditors take you to court and obtain a county court judgment against you, your assets can be sold to pay the debt.

dancingfairy

In theory yes they could petition for your bankruptcy/try and go for the house. In practice it's more likely they will go for the CCJ and then go for a charging order. The charging order will just sit there until you sell the house, where they will get there money back. It is very very very unlikely they will try and force a sale. I'm not 100% sure whether they can charge interest on this debt though
I really wouldn't go for the secured loan approach - 1) they appear to understand you are having difficulties and have agreed a payment plan for now and 2) if you did get a secured loan and missed any payments it puts your house at a lot more risk.
Your best bet is to contact the debt charities again and go through it all with them.
Try National Debtline or CCCS if the CAB have a ridiculous waiting list in your area.
df

silvercar

No one can make you take out a loan, but if your creditors take you to court and obtain a county court judgment against you, your assets can be sold to pay the debt.

Only if the judge allows the CCJ to be registered as a charge on the property. Even then the debt would be paid when the house is sold. To force a sale the creditor is going to have to persuade the judge to do so for a very small percentage of the house value.

silvercar

My real question is can I be forced into bancruptcy by being made to take out a secured loan to repay this, and other debts which I would then not be able to afford, as the total debt comes to 9K and I wouldn't be able to afford the repayments on a loan that big. ie: lose the house.

You are jumping ahead of yourself here.

You could end up with a CCJ or a secured charge on your home. Whether an individual creditor would go to the expense of forcing you into bankruptcy is debatable. No-one can force you to take a secured loan.

dancingfairy

How many people have a forced order for sale against them as a result of a debt? Any at all? There must be thousands of people with charging orders yet I believe forced sale orders are incredibly incredibly rare. What judge in the land is going to let a ceditor sell a house to get back 6,000 on a 80,000 ish house, with someone in who got into difficulties because their partner unfortunately passed away - think of the media backlash that would create.
Your best bet is to continue as you are and make payments for what you can whether that be 5 pounds a month or whatever - this will show a judge (if it goes to court) that you are being entirely reasonable and doing your best to repay the debt. It might help to get the debt charities on side as they can to a certain extent shield you from the pressure tactics of some of the debt collection companies but at the end of the day they can threaten court all they like but frankly you know you owe money, you'd be paying what you could and it's therefore highly likely a judge would make an order that you continue to repay them at 5 pounds per month (or whatever).
df

silvercar

If you intend paying all your debts then you should pay the higher interest ones first along with your priority debts like your mortgage.

Are there any family members that could help you with this. If so, you could show your reduced income to a creditor and tell them that you have someone who will make a one off full and final payment in settlement of the debt. Could make it cheaper in the long run, then you could pay off the family without feeling pressure or high interest.

silvercar

dancingfairy wrote: »

How many people have a forced order for sale against them as a result of a debt? Any at all? There must be thousands of people with charging orders yet I believe forced sale orders are incredibly incredibly rare. What judge in the land is going to let a ceditor sell a house to get back 6,000 on a 80,000 ish house, with someone in who got into difficulties because their partner unfortunately passed away - think of the media backlash that would create.
df

Totally agree. Please don't be scared into doing anything rash.

Mrs_Arcanum

Definitely talk to the people in the link mel12 posted first. Whatever you do try to avoid taking on more/different debt to pay this off, but do keep paying an affordable amount whilst this gets sorted out.

hostie

I agree with other posters - don't take out any more debt to sort this and don't increase your mortgage.
Do you have furniture or something that you could sell to try to clear some of the debt? If you put up a soa we might be able to help you work out how to shuffle the debt around.

I agree you should keep paying them £5 per month or what you can afford.