Seems too easy!

Itsahardlife

I arranged an IVA last year and I am now having trouble meeting the repayments, from what was said at the original meeting I automatically thought that if I missed payments then I would be made b/c by my creditors which to be honest would be a relief in my current financial situation. However on contacting my IP I have been informed that the creditors are prob likely to accept a minimal payment for a period of say 6 months hoping that in this time my circumstances may change and extending my IVA a few more years.
This has surprised me but I am not sure I want to add a few more years onto a time that seemed quite long to me in the first place.

I do wonder now whether I should have gone for the b/r option first time round as like has been said my credit rating will be affected for far longer than if I had gone b/r. At the time I was renting privately and was concerned it would affect me staying in that property or getting another one.
I was told by the IP that there was no difference regards credit rating between the two but there obviously is!

I am interested that your b/r fees would be paid for out of the IVA, I wonder if I could now go for b/r and it would be as easy as you have experienced.

wherediditallgo

Itsahardlife, I haven't got personal experience of IVAs, but from what I've read it seems to me that some people don't realise or simply aren't told that every time they have a change of circumstances they have to go back to whoever they've set it up with to let them know as they may need to get it lowered, & that agreement to that isn't automatic. It's in some companies' interests to get you to sign up for an IVA because they make money out of that, whereas they get nothing out of your going BR, so they try to get your signature on the dotted line asap.

It may well be that your circumstances change for the better, making it easier for you to afford the monthly payments. However, the reality for most of us that with an increase in income comes an increase in rent/mortgage, utility bills, fares etc, so we see next to nothing of the extra money or may even end up worse off. If you don't think that another 6 months is going to leave you any better off than you are now, the best I can suggest is do the token payments for that 6 months & use that time to save up the money for going BR. If you can go BR now, that might be an even better option for you - you'd need to speak to one of the advisory services on that. An IVA that's already for quite a few years & which you're already having difficulty meeting isn't going to be any easier to deal with by extending it for even more.

SeaBreeze

Hi Rufus, I paid into an IVA for a year and then lost my job due to illness. I wrote to my IP at the time and cancelled my DD to them. At no time did they offer to make me bankrupt. They want to keep hold of the money you've paid, after a year of £321 a month there was nothing to give the OR as they accounted for every penny for their expenses! I looked into IP's actually making someone with a failed IVA bankrupt last year and the reality is that they rarely do. What happens is that they notify your creditors that the IVA failed and then you're back in the same situation as before the IVA was set up. I saved up the bankruptcy fee out of the IVA payment i'd cancelled and notified IP of date of Bankruptcy. They then had the cheek to ask me to send them a copy of my bankruptcy order. Emailed them to say look on Insolvency website where I was listed twice, once for their IVA and once for the bankruptcy! Never heard from them again!