What to do about old debt.

Lieja

Hello, sorry if I've missed an obvious thread on this.

Basially my partner has lots of debts due to being useless with money, and I've been sorting them out. Because of this we already pay quite a lot in debt repayments every week, and about 2 weeks ago we received yet another debt collection letter. This one is from a collection company saying that he owes £198.11 to BT. My partner cannot remember how old the debt actually is, but hasn't been with BT for at least a couple of years. We can't afford to pay this at the moment on top of everything else, and I would like to know if there's a way of stopping them until we can afford it? The debt is for my partner's previous address and he never received anything there about a debt from BT, and it's only since we moved house that they're following it up. If they've waited this long, surely they can wait longer?!

Thanks in advance

Tixy

Hi

First response to this sort of letter should be the prove it letter - one it gets them to prove he owes the debt without acknowledging it it his and 2 it stalls for time.
If they do prove that he owes it then you could write to offer token payments until your finances improve which might get them to back off for a while.

Have you defaulted on other debts? are you paying less than the minimum payments? if so you should really add this debt to the others and then work out how much to pay each one by working out how much you can afford in total and splitting pro-rata between your creditors based on the outstanding balance owed to each.

Prove it letter template http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=11570893&postcount=2