DRO - wait until limit increases? What to do in meantime?

ASCMAYTREE30

Hi there! Just after a bit of advice please. I have been looking in to getting a DRO however my debts fall just above the £20k threshold (£23k). I had heard that the limit may be increasing soon but there has been a bit of a delay.

I have been paying my minimum monthly payments albeit seriously struggling and to be honest should have looked at reducing payments/contacting the creditors a long time ago. I am at the point now of borrowing money etc. from family just to pay my priority payments each month which is not a long term solution. Would I be better off contacting my creditors to explain that I am going through financial difficulty and asking them to put a hold on my account/s for 30 days? I'm not sure if I should do this myself or go through Stepchange. My worry is that because I am over the 20k threshold obviously Stepchange can't advise a DRO so will recommend I go on a DMP or make token payments.

Thank you in advance.

sourcrates

You don`t have to do anything in a hurry, the collections process a creditor uses can take quite a while, many months of letters, calls etc.

Then if passed to a debt collector, they use a similar formula, they run through there series of collection letters, try to phone you etc etc, again, this goes on for anywhere up to a year possibly, so you are under no pressure here to do anything yet, contrary to popular belief, the collection process can take many months or even years in some cases.

The threshold will be raised in due course, you can of course write and explain your situation, but if your going to take the insolvency route it matters little what you tell your creditors now does it.

fatbelly

This might be a good case for token offers on the non-priorities. There's a standard letter on National Debtline.

Please stop 'borrowing' from family - you are not going to be allowed to repay them in insolvency. If you want to do a statement of affairs we can help more

https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/soa.php

MalMonroe

You could still phone Stepchange (0800 138 1111) to talk things through. I used them a few years ago and they advised me to get a DRO as my debt was below the £20k level.

BUT they do have other solutions and if you do not like them you can just say 'no'. I found it really helpful to have them advising and working on my behalf - if you submit a DRO through them apparently it has more chance of success (is what I was told, I don't know if it's true so don't quote me on that). I don't know about you but when I was in a terrible financial mess I just could not think straight and worried all the time. 

I found just talking to my allocated adviser at Stepchange really helpful - they are friendly, helpful, knowledgeable and most important of all, non-judgemental.

It's a free phone call and it's all very confidential. You can talk, listen and if you don't want to take their advice you don't have to. There's no commitment at all. 

Why not just give it a try? Borrowing from family just leads to disaster. There IS a way out, you can start by contacting the people who can definitely help you. 

Good luck. 

sourcrates

MalMonroe said:

 if you submit a DRO through them apparently it has more chance of success (is what I was told, I don't know if it's true so don't quote me on that). 

You can only apply for a DRO through a recognised intermediary, such as Stepchange, CAB, or other approved provider.


Your advisor goes through everything with you, and only when things are all fully finalised, is the application sent.

Its not a question of success or failure, if you meet the basic criteria, and don`t have any skeletons in the closet, you are approved.

Normally if an application were expected to fail, it would not be sent.

theoretica

ASCMAYTREE30 said:

 My worry is that because I am over the 20k threshold obviously Stepchange can't advise a DRO so will recommend I go on a DMP or make token payments.

They may well do - but having spent a while on a DMP or making token payments won't stop you later going for a DRO if you become eligible, and will stop you getting into a worse position now.

danjackson2021

ASCMAYTREE30 said:

Hi there! Just after a bit of advice please. I have been looking in to getting a DRO however my debts fall just above the £20k threshold (£23k). I had heard that the limit may be increasing soon but there has been a bit of a delay.

I have been paying my minimum monthly payments albeit seriously struggling and to be honest should have looked at reducing payments/contacting the creditors a long time ago. I am at the point now of borrowing money etc. from family just to pay my priority payments each month which is not a long term solution. Would I be better off contacting my creditors to explain that I am going through financial difficulty and asking them to put a hold on my account/s for 30 days? I'm not sure if I should do this myself or go through Stepchange. My worry is that because I am over the 20k threshold obviously Stepchange can't advise a DRO so will recommend I go on a DMP or make token payments.

Thank you in advance.

Do we know yet what the limit will increase to and when

fatbelly

danjackson2021 said:

Do we know yet what the limit will increase to and when

Not exactly. The proposal was 30k, and the date 4 May, but there is still no sign of the necessary legislation.

If anyone spots it, flag it up on this board!

JonVarnas

If you're serious about a DRO then I wouldn't bother making payments to your creditors at all as the DRO will knacker your credit record anyway so you are basically throwing away money. Use the money you would have paid them to

• Pay back your relatives
• Build up an emergency fund
• Replace any items that are getting old because you won't be getting any credit for a while.

Don't worry about debt collectors because as others have said it takes ages for them to do anything. Sure they'll ring you and send letters but they're easy to ignore. In my case I stopped paying my creditors in May 2019 and they didn't start looking at court action until Oct 2020, which was too late for them because I was already in a DRO.

1977dave

If you are paying back your relatives then this would be seen as a preferential payment in which case a DRO may be refused, so I'd advise not to pay back any creditors, or at least say you haven't made any preferential payments.

I'm not sure how much is checked as to transferring money/withdrawing money to pay relatives as my DRO was straightforward

Just something to keep in mind

liggerz87

I had 23k of debt I didn't know how much St the time I started talking to step change to get the ball rolling I called lowell as they had sent me a few letters the other collectors hadn't so I called lowell up and I was just honest with them had depression and so on was trying to do a dro and as a good will gesture to me they wiped everything I owed them that then dropped me below the 20k threshold and had to wait 3 months as step change suggested because of the preferntal payment and also had to send step change the letters I received from lowell saying I Don owe them no money for the debt my dro got accepted 4th November 2019 I'm now debt free