Help with Mortgage

pepper33

I have been off sick with anxiety/stresss. I have a mortgage with my sister, I have now been cut to half pay, and cannot afford my half of the mortgage. Can I claim anything from somewhere?
I can't get back to work until I am fully better, and the waiting list for treatment is 8 weeks or more. I have paid for some treatment, but since my pay was cut and I have had to apply for EAS, on my NI, not income based, I was told by someone that I cannot even get housing benefit.:mad::mad:

mrsrwallace

pepper33, i'm sorry to say this but yeah it seems very likely that you are ineligible for any assistance with your mortgage.

You may recall I had similar circumstances where my husband was suddenly out of work and we had to live on my pay alone. He applied for JSA which he did not get because my part-time wages were technically "what the law says" we need to live on so were ineligible for any help. You can only get help with the mortgage interest if you are in receipt of Income Support, JSA and something else which I'm not sure of at the minute!

As your sister works and is named on the mortgage with you then that is considered joint income and no you cannot get Housing Benefit to pay towards your mortgage. It took the Social Security office many months to get back to us to say we were not eligible for help and I would say you are probably the same. I think you might get help with your rates as we do.

The only thing you can do is contact your lender and negotiate a longer term or reduced monthly payments, our lender agreed an extended term, then accepted a lower payment offer for 3 months but then asked us to increase the payments again which we couldn't do. We have our house on the market now.

I'm unsure as to what advice to give you. If your sister cannot afford to keep up the payments alone then maybe you could share a room and rent one out? Or if you had an idea of when you could go back to work you could advise the lender payments would resume. Would you be able to sell or would you lose money by doing so?

pepper33

Hi Mrs Wallace, back again. My injuries were caused by bulllying at work, and I have a grievance in against them. I have applied for full pay to be restored as the injury was caused by them, and under mental health and safety, they should be taken seriiously. I am sure we could keep up the mortgage, but food, gas,electricity might not get paid in full. I have applied to the Nationwide to freeze interest on my cc, but they have put late charges on the account. I am about to move my bank a/c, as it is with Nationwide. I am expecting a payout re equal pay some time this year...
If we sold the house, we would lose a lot of money, as no houses are selling around our area, and the house needs some repair work done as well. I hope to get back to work pretty soon, and if I won the lottery, I promise to help other people out. In England and Wales they have schemes that help people that own their houses with mortgage arrears, thats why I thought we would have one here as well. x

mrsrwallace

yeah we just can't get the same equality as England even though we are in the UK and it is no wonder many of us here have sunk into depression with the debts and lack of assistance. The only other thing I can suggest is the credit card is a non-priority and unsecured debt so the Citizens Advice or another free debt charity can help with that and do an income and expenditure sheet to show that you can only afford a token payment. The CAB can ask for the interest to be frozen on that too and see if that could help you. It would keep them from hitting you with charges and give you time to get back on your feet. Good luck with the claim against the bully, don't back down.

Oh the lotto would be great!!! Oh to dream!

saverbuyer

mrsrwallace wrote: »

yeah we just can't get the same equality as England even though we are in the UK and it is no wonder many of us here have sunk into depression with the debts and lack of assistance. The only other thing I can suggest is the credit card is a non-priority and unsecured debt so the Citizens Advice or another free debt charity can help with that and do an income and expenditure sheet to show that you can only afford a token payment. The CAB can ask for the interest to be frozen on that too and see if that could help you. It would keep them from hitting you with charges and give you time to get back on your feet. Good luck with the claim against the bully, don't back down.

Oh the lotto would be great!!! Oh to dream!

You do get support in the form of SMI BUT only if you claim

• Income Support
• income-related Employment and Support Allowance
• Pension Credit

It is the same in England. We also have access to insurance products that protect us from times like those above. I believe they have similar products in England also.

Golden_Anemone

saverbuyer wrote: »

You do get support in the form of SMI BUT only if you claim

• Income Support
• income-related Employment and Support Allowance
• Pension Credit

It is the same in England. We also have access to insurance products that protect us from times like those above. I believe they have similar products in England also.

There is additional support available in England & Wales by way of Mortgage Rescue Schemes which are not only available to people on meanst tested benefits though demonstrating hardship is obviously a prerequisite to obtain help.

These schemes are not available in NI sadly.