From article: Your home sold is you have more than £3000 of debt? What do you think?

Uniscots97

Caught a bit of this in the paper yesterday (Scotland, The Herald). It was basically saying that parliament are pushing through a bill that means that if you have over £3000 of debt creditors can force the sale of your home (Scotland only) to reclaim debt if you are in arrears. I've never missed a payment for my cc or loan so I'm not affected but to some people this prospect must be frightening! I don't have any more details. Does anyone? What's your views? I do know one couple who are heavily in debt and due to arrears may be caught out by this. From what the paper was saying it doesn't look like personal circumstances will be taken into account.

Personally this sort of thing makes my blood boil. If it does go through it'll create more homeless and put strain on councils to find accomodation for families.

Nuclear_Tom

This is outrageous, I can't imagine something like this going through tbh.

immoral_angeluk

What?????? That's ridiculous!!! what the hells the point of debts being unsecured if they can force you to sell your home?

sophiesmum_2

basically they can in theory already do this. A creditor can make you bankrupt for arrears and then this can lead to you selling your home, if you can't sort out payments. A bit drastic but has been done.

£3000.00 is quite a low amount of debt though.

sophiesmum

Uniscots97

Yes I thought £3000 was low too but thats what the article said. Here's the link http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/72384.html

stacey21_2

Is this if you have £3000 in arrears, or £3000 in general debt?
Most people have car loans for anything from £1000 upwards - so how would that work?

CLAPTON

currently you can be made bankrupt for unpaid debts of £750

cathybird

stacey21 wrote:

Is this if you have £3000 in arrears, or £3000 in general debt?
Most people have car loans for anything from £1000 upwards - so how would that work?

no it would have to be arrears. obviously banks/finance companies etc make a lot of money out of consumer debt, as long as they're getting paid back - the more debt you've got the happier they are as long as you can keep paying. They'd only want to force the return of the money if they aren't getting repaid.

madduck

As a Scot on a DMP this scares the hell out of me! I know how unreasonable some of my creditors are. At the moment I have at least some peace of mind in that I know that what is the worst they can do - take me to court to only get the payments that I make already more secure! With this - they can take my home from me - especially as there is a significant amount of equity tied up in the house. This change in legislation hasn't been given much airplay in Scotland up to now - interesting times ahead given that an election to the Scottish parliament is on the horizon. Good to know that our friends in the Labour party have our interests at heart!!!

beanielou

This will be used as a last resort.
Similar to a English Charging Order.

madduck

Not according to the article. The main difference seems to be that the Sheriff won't have the same level of discretion as a judge would have in England and Wales.

I might be a cynic, but we all know how low down and dirty some of the debt collection firms can be. I can see some of them hunting people down without mercy just because they can. Why would some of them take the time to go down the DMP route with payments over a number of years rather than the quick route by taking someones home from them.

Just seems like a two track justice system. Corporate UK can swindle people out of hard earned (ala Farepack) and individual citizens don't even have the right to keep a roof over their heads (in Scotland anyway). Thanks Jack McConnell!