Struggling with iva. Please help!

ruthy66

Me and my husband are 2 1/2 years into paying off an iva and we are struggling to make ends meet. We are having to pawn items of jewellery or borrow off family and friends to survive each month and the thought of continuing to do this for another 2 1/2 years is driving us to despair.
I have asked my husband to tell our iva company that we are struggling but he doesn't want to!
Is it possible to have the iva payments reduced? Or is bankruptcy our best option? When we started paying the iva we were only paying just over £700, now we are paying almost £1100, which is the same amount as our mortgage!
Would be grateful for any advice please:(:(:(

fermi

ruthy66 wrote: »

Me and my husband are 2 1/2 years into paying off an iva and we are struggling to make ends meet. We are having to pawn items of jewellery or borrow off family and friends to survive each month

You should NOT be having to do that in an IVA.

I think you are going to have to bite the bullet and talk to the IVA company. If the payments are excessive, then you would basically put it on the line that either they are reduced, or you will be forced to end the IVA.

ruthy66

Thanks fermi
Can the iva company refuse to reduce our payments though? Have thought about bankruptcy but we do not want to lose our home!
Our iva company is Liberta who charge a monthly fee. Can we change iva companies if they refuse to reduce our payments? Are there better fee free companies that we could change to?

DorisTrousers

Your I.P. has discretion to reduce your payments by 15% without referring to your creditors, so your first step is to insist they do so. Secondly, ask for a breakdown of how your payment increases were calculated. At annual review, if you have £100 more spare than you did last year then your payment goes up by £50 in a protocol compliant IVA. You have a bit more, they get a bit more, which is fair enough. By logical progression, that indicates you should be £400 per month, or thereabouts, better off than when you started. Clearly you aren't so it is eminently possible that your increases have been incorrectly calculated.

Good luck, and let us know how you get on.