Urgent advice needed on house/repossession

Trinitrotoluene

Hello

The following is on behalf of my partner who is going bankrupt shortly.

All of these problems and debts are between her and her ex husband. I will try to keep this just limited to the facts! They had a house together. When they split (2007) the house was still in negative equity so they decided to rent it out. They successfully started renting out, her husband sorted this out independently. An agreement was setup between both their solicitors, the rent didn't cover all the mortgage so my partner paid her ex an amount per month to meet the shortfall.

Separate to the mortgage they had a number of unsecured debts (credit card/bank loans etc) to the tune of around £30k. They are currently consolidated into one payment through a debt management company.

Everything was fine until about a week and a half ago where my partner heard the house was being repossessed. It turns out that her ex had been pocketing the rental money from the tenant and also her contribution towards the mortgage and spending it on his own life. He has subsequently not paid the mortgage for nearly a year.

At this stage, according to the papers I have recently seen there is already a repossession order in place and has been granted by the court and the bailiffs are about to enforce it against the property. My partners ex has been keeping this from her and has known about this for a while. My partner has no interest in keeping the house after all this.

This left her in a significant amount of arrears with the bank that she can not afford now on top of everyday living expenses.

Her ex has told her that he is going bankrupt and subsequently she will have to.

My main questions at the moment:

1) As I understand it, as the house is a secured asset it will not be affected by bankruptcy. Now the repossession order has been granted does that mean the house now belongs to the bank? How will this affect a bankruptcy. If it helps the house is expected to go for a lot less than what is owed on it and will likely end up with in the tens of thousands owed on it

2) How are we best dealing with her ex, bearing in mind he is going bankrupt. We worked out that he owes my partner around £3000 he has siphoned off her this years in money that was meant to go to the mortgage

3) How do we and do we need to declare this house on the bankruptcy forms? At what point does it become the asset of the bank.

4) Is it better that she declare bankruptcy ASAP given the above situation and then let the OR sort out the house issue

5) Me and my partner try to split the bills 50/50. For a good long while now I have been covering the bills almost single handedly. When the monthly outgoing are put into the bankruptcy forms, do we put the total cost of the outgoings, and then declare my contribution or do I calculate the amount that my partner should be spending. If this question doesn't make sense I can try to clarify.

Any help would be appreciated. I've never been so stressed trying to help her sort this out.

OutofDebt-NOT-OutofDanger

Trinitrotoluene wrote: »

Hello


My main questions at the moment:

1) As I understand it, as the house is a secured asset it will not be affected by bankruptcy. Now the repossession order has been granted does that mean the house now belongs to the bank? How will this affect a bankruptcy. If it helps the house is expected to go for a lot less than what is owed on it and will likely end up with in the tens of thousands owed on it. Once the house is repossessed, any debts that were secured on it become unsecured debts and will fall into the BR. It doesn't matter whether the repossession happens before or after BR as long as she doesn't sign anything after BR (unlikely given that it is now at the court stage anyway).

2) How are we best dealing with her ex, bearing in mind he is going bankrupt. We worked out that he owes my partner around £3000 he has siphoned off her this years in money that was meant to go to the mortgage If he goes BR then she will become another unsecured creditor in his BR although as she will be going BR as well, this would be deemed as an asset by the OR and they would be the beneficiary.

3) How do we and do we need to declare this house on the bankruptcy forms? At what point does it become the asset of the bank. It becomes the bank's asset when they are legally allowed to gain possession of it. What (if any) date have you been given for the bailiff to attend?

4) Is it better that she declare bankruptcy ASAP given the above situation and then let the OR sort out the house issue. As the shortfall will be included whether or not the house is repossessed at the time of BR, it's really down to her - make sure she has everything else sorted first such as a BR friendly bank account and has taken proper advice from one of the debt charities.

5) Me and my partner try to split the bills 50/50. For a good long while now I have been covering the bills almost single handedly. When the monthly outgoing are put into the bankruptcy forms, do we put the total cost of the outgoings, and then declare my contribution or do I calculate the amount that my partner should be spending. If this question doesn't make sense I can try to clarify.
Your partner should declare her income, your contribution to joint expenses, full cost of joint expenses (e.g. rent, council tax, etc.) and her outgoings in full (travel, own mobile, etc.)
Any help would be appreciated. I've never been so stressed trying to help her sort this out.

Hope this helps, but do get your partner to speak to one of the debt charities (Stepchange, Payplan, etc.) as she will need to confirm to the court that she has taken professional advice prior to declaring BR.

tigerfeet2006

Just to add to Out of Debt's excellent advice, as the house is nearly repo'd I would wait until it is done and dusted and then apply to go BR as it is almost imminent. Just let the court know that you have no objection to the repo as they may be kind in your absence and try and give you more time.