DMP and settling Defaulted accounts

Westminster

First a bit of background:
I got into difficulties when I was self-employed and had to stop work to care for my wife who has MS when she had a very heavy run of relapses. We ended up on Income Support / Carers Allowance etc etc.

I had something like £70k of unsecured debt at the time. I have been on a DMP with PayPlan since mid 2006.

Since she started to improve, our financial position improved substantially after I trained for a new career (with lots of help from family to fund the training) so my DMP payments have more than doubled since it started.

I have been able to agree a few F&F settlements with MBNA, Citibank and Redcastle / Co-Op. I also have a few offers from Barclays and Cabot but not quite in a position to clear them at the moment.

Currently the debt stands at around £40k and I will have it cleared in 9 years at the current payment.

Now for the question:
I still get default notices (particularly from Cabot) so I wondered if I was possibly being 're-defaulted' every month so that the 6 years period for them to drop off my credit file was reset. I finally got the courage to check my file today. Most of the accounts on the DMP defaulted around 5 years ago with the exception of Cahoot who for some reason only defaulted me a year ago.

So once the 6 year period is reached on the default date - what happens on my credit file?

Is it worth trying to scrape together the money to take up my outstanding F&F offers to clear the DMP earlier?

FWIW - I have no interest in taking up credit again in the future as I have managed to live on budgeting real money for the past several years. However - we are expecting our first child in February and our current house will not be big enough for very long. I managed to keep clean & current on our mortgage and we have a fair amount of equity in it despite the drop in house prices.

Tixy

Hi

Once you reach 6years after the default date the account and the default all disappear from your file altogether (no trace of them at all, no way for anyone to know they were ever on there).

Well done on clearing so much of your debt already, reducing it by £30k is excellent.

As to whether to try and get money together to take up the F&Fs - if you could get the money it would certainly be an option but it sounds like a lot of money to raise. One thing worth remembering is that if a creditor/DCA has offered you a F&F settlement once then they'll almost certainly make the offers again or accept offers from you at the same sort of level. They are never one-time only offers (even if they say they are!).

Westminster

Update
Today had a nice letter from Captial One (shocker!) to agree to my request and they have backdated my default 1st Feb 2006 so it will drop off my file 1st Feb 2012 - result!!

Tixy

That is a result, well done.
And thanks for posting back, worth knowing for other people in the same situation with 1 default much later than the rest.

Westminster

Its one down and 4 more defaults to backdate - but an encouraging start!