Sharing household bills in a Debt Relief Order

paul041

I have £14800 of unsecured debt, and I am thinking of applying for a DRO. At the moment I pay half the rent and other bills, but my income is quite a bit lower than my partner's. She makes just under £32k gross, but I only get £10k. Will I be able to keep on paying the same amounts?

There is nothing extravagant, but I am worried I might be ordered to pay the same percentage as my share of the household income. Which would be very unfair to my partner, when we have just signed another year's rental contract on the basis that I'd pay half. Her own budget is based on me doing that, and she is not at all responsible for my debts.

That isn't the worst of it though. If I was forced to cut my contribution to the household bills, I'd have more than the allowed £50 monthly surplus and I wouldn't qualify for a DRO at all. Catch-22....

I posted this on TMF as well, hope that's okay.

fatbelly

No-one's going to order you to pay anything. The question is whether your surplus income is less than £50 per month. If it isn't you just don't get a DRO.

You need to discuss this with your Intermediary who will have experience of putting the Income/Expenditure statement together, and access to the trigger figures. If he/she doesn't think it will 'stick' then find another strategy.

Who are you thinking of going with?

What was the response from TMF?

paul041

From reading other posts on here it looked like I should get all my facts straight and then go to Baines & Ernst, because they could process a DRO pretty fast. Is that still a smart move?

On TMF I got one guy who thinks my wife should be held responsible for my debts, even though it's just my name on them and most are from before we met. Scared me at first but I think he's just got a chip on his shoulder.

The other thing is Manzanilla said it's hard to get DROs approved now for more than £14k. My debts will be near £14800 by next month. Would my wife be able to pay a month's minimum payments to stop the penalty charges racking up?

fatbelly wrote: »

Who are you thinking of going with?

What was the response from TMF?

wba31

paul041 wrote: »

From reading other posts on here it looked like I should get all my facts straight and then go to Baines & Ernst, because they could process a DRO pretty fast. Is that still a smart move?

On TMF I got one guy who thinks my wife should be held responsible for my debts, even though it's just my name on them and most are from before we met. Scared me at first but I think he's just got a chip on his shoulder.

The other thing is Manzanilla said it's hard to get DROs approved now for more than £14k. My debts will be near £14800 by next month. Would my wife be able to pay a month's minimum payments to stop the penalty charges racking up?

Baines and Ernst are a fee charger when it comes to repayment plans, so they may try and coerce you into repaying rather than the DRO.

If I were you I would approach someone free, CCCS, NDL or CAB. I know someone who works at CCCS who said they get them done within about 3 weeks at the mo - they also said anyone who is close to the £15k limit they tend to give priority to, to get them through quicker. If your debt is under £15k and you meet all other criteria the order should be approved, people can't turn you away for being over £14k, the limit is £15000!

On your budget, do you and your partner split cost 50/50? so if total monthly costs are £1000 for example, you're paying £500 each? If I was advising you and you told me you earn a quarter of the household income I would advise that you should only pay a quarter of the expenditure, so it would affect the budget. However, you dont have to tell anyone anything about your partner. you could ring someone (and again I recommend the free people) and say "this is my contribution" and if they ask about your partners income, you could simply say "my partner has their own debts to pay, and their own personal expenditure..." The DRO Unit wouldn't question a budget too much (as it will only show your side of things) however if any creditors look deeply into it, and see unbalance expenditure (knowing your partners income) they may appeal, but whether that would really happen...?

fatbelly

paul041 wrote: »

From reading other posts on here it looked like I should get all my facts straight and then go to Baines & Ernst, because they could process a DRO pretty fast. Is that still a smart move?

On TMF I got one guy who thinks my wife should be held responsible for my debts, even though it's just my name on them and most are from before we met. Scared me at first but I think he's just got a chip on his shoulder.

The other thing is Manzanilla said it's hard to get DROs approved now for more than £14k. My debts will be near £14800 by next month. Would my wife be able to pay a month's minimum payments to stop the penalty charges racking up?

In reverse order...

Manzanilla's wrong. I did one for £14997 a few weeks back. No probs. But you do need to act fast if you're already at £14800. Your wife can do what she wants with her money.

The guy on TMF sounds like a loonie.

The fastest DROs I've heard of here were done by the CAB. But you would need to find one with a switched-on Intermediary, and not all CABs have them. I'm not a big fan of B&E (as they are a fee-charging debt management provider) but there have been some positive comments on here about them.

paul041

Yes, exactly. The rent, council tax and utilities are paid from my wife's account, and the food shopping from mine. So each payday I transfer her my share of the bills less her share of the food. I don't think it would be reasonable for me to pay less when I make the same use of our flat as she does, and like you said she does have her own costs. A car loan for one, and I think some credit cards. And she is helping support her sister at university overseas.

Will she have to provide bank statements showing these bill payments?

wba31 wrote: »

On your budget, do you and your partner split cost 50/50? so if total monthly costs are £1000 for example, you're paying £500 each?

I hear what you're saying about B&E, and I'm going to ask Debtline or the CAB to help me draw up an application. Once I've done that though, surely I can ask B&E if they would be willing to submit it, and the time it would take.

fatbelly

paul041 wrote: »

I hear what you're saying about B&E, and I'm going to ask Debtline or the CAB to help me draw up an application. Once I've done that though, surely I can ask B&E if they would be willing to submit it, and the time it would take.

It doesn't really work that way. The application has to be prepared by an Approved Intermediary. It then stays with that Intermediary until it can be submitted. If you get one from the CAB to set one up for you then it makes no sense to start a second one with someone else. You just pay the £90 on the barcode that the CAB Intermediary provides and let them know that you've done it. The DRO Unit likes the payment to be made on or before the day the application is submitted.

If you want to speed things up, get a £2 statutory credit report from Experian, ready to give or send to your Intermediary.

Be careful - Debtline and National Debtline are different organisations (bad and good respectively!)