Advice needed re charging order

Eager_Elephant

OK I have just checked back and can see that you got the CCJ in Jan this year. Have you been paying the amount that the court set when the CCJ was awarded against you??

From your post in 2005 you owed £31,000 between you and were only going to pay £78pm which would take 35 years.

You have now said you have increased your payments so how much do you owe in total and how much are you paying each month?

EE

Eager_Elephant

OK leela, thanks for answering.

As soon as the CCj paperwork was received, CCCS should have produced a new income/expenditure taking in to account the amount you have to pay on the CCJ. This has then become a priority debt and CCCS should not have been paying A&L through their system as they do not deal with priority debts.

You should have maintained these payments as much as possible and even stopped paying your other creditors.

Normally when you apply for a variation (who helped you with this?) the judge would look at it again and set it lower, I am therefore assuming that your full situation was not shown clearly.

Can you clarify the above please?

EE

leela_2

OK I have just checked back and can see that you got the CCJ in Jan this year. Have you been paying the amount that the court set when the CCJ was awarded against you??

From your post in 2005 you owed £31,000 between you and were only going to pay £78pm which would take 35 years.

You have now said you have increased your payments so how much do you owe in total and how much are you paying each month?

We got the forms in January this year,we didnt actually get the judgement through until April which was set at £155 a month,we currently pay them £47 ,so thats we why we applied for the redetermination.
Ours debts currently stand at just over £29.000 ,we now pay £282 a month .

leela_2

As soon as the CCj paperwork was received, CCCS should have produced a new income/expenditure taking in to account the amount you have to pay on the CCJ. This has then become a priority debt and CCCS should not have been paying A&L through their system as they do not deal with priority debts.

You should have maintained these payments as much as possible and even stopped paying your other creditors.

Normally when you apply for a variation (who helped you with this?) the judge would look at it again and set it lower, I am therefore assuming that your full situation was not shown clearly.

Can you clarify the above please?

CCCS did not do any of what you said ,basically they said dont panic and sent me a template letter for a redetermination,we also did not attend the hearing as it was on the other side of the country.

Eager_Elephant

OK I think CCCS may have ballsed up big time.

A CCJ is a very serious matter, if you receive a CCJ and the judgement payments are too high you should use form N245 to request a variation. This form gives you another chance to explain your situation and the judge would then look at your situation again and set a another payment order.

You don't need to attend a CCJ hearing, but if you had stated you would like to attend they will move it to your nearest court.

Anyway this is all by the by, have you seriously considered bankruptcy? Do you or your partner have jobs that would be affected by bankruptcy? On this DMP it will take you 8.5 years unless your circimstances change. How much equity do you have in the property?

A general rule of thumb I use is that if a DMP is going to take longer than 6 years you might as well go bankrupt because it will be over quicker and so much can happen in them years. Obviously this changes depending on the person's job and future prospects.

EE

leela_2

No we dont want to consider bankruptcy,we have quite a lot of equity in the house and if we did we would never be able to get on the property ladder again with the house prices now.8.5 years may seem a long time but when you compare it to 32 its nothing!

Eager_Elephant

OK regarding the charging order, it is unlikely the judge will not grant it. Their theory will be you owe the money, you failed to pay the instalments so why shouldn't you have a charge put on the property.

I assume this hearing is being held at your local court?

Do you owe other creditors a similar amount? You could try to argue that a charging order being granted to A & L could unduly prejudice other creditors rights because you are making pro-rata payments.

You also need to ask for conditions to be attached to the charging order otherwise there is the possibility that you could be forced to sell your home in the future and then the worry about bankruptcy would be for nothing. You could try to ask for a condition to be that the house cannot be forced to a sale until the youngest child is 18.

You could also ask that the enforcement of the charging order be suspended as long as you pay an agreed amount per month. The problem with this is that if you miss a payment then the creditor is more likely to force a sale.

As CCCS mentioned take along all your pwk and proof of your payments.

I think you mentioned before that the A & L debt is your husbands, if you split your equity in half would a family member be able to afford that amount to buy out the share of equity and then he could go bankrupt?

EE

tostao

you have had some very good advice, just one tip for post charging order action, get any agreed payments set up on direct debit at least a week before normal payment date, any missed or even late payments allows creditor to apply for an order for sale, don't worry though district judges don't give these orders if you stick to the agreed payments, it also works in your favour as no further charges can be applied to the debt, and if the terms are to high get advice on challenging them, they can be varied, which begs the question how much of the £12,000 is made up of penalty charges, ask for them to be deducted, remember 'shy bairns get nowt'

leela_2

Thaks EE for all your advice,you certainly know your stuff!
Yes the hearing is at our local court.
A&L are by far our biggest creditors,the highest of the others is in the region of £3.5.
Yes the A&L debt is my partners(we are not married).Unfortunately no one in our family is in the position of being able to but him out,if only!
How likely is it that if the charging order goes ahead that interest will be frozen?Is it right that they can set it as high as 8%?

Eager_Elephant

That is correct, if a debt is over £5,000 interest will continue to accrue at a statutory 8% per annum.

So if your payments are not high enough you could find that after a few years you owe more than you thought.

The problem I see with this is you will have problems remortgaging in the future and also if the interest has crept up you might not have as much equity as you think.

EE