DMP exhaustion

Weimsrock

Hello all, just after some advice really as becoming drained and exhausted with dmp. 

Basically I amassed £35k worth of debt back in 2019 on credit cards from living beyond my means after divorce. I have been in a DMP with Stepchange since then and have managed to get the balance down to £16.5k however my monthly payment has had to reduce to £200 and I’m not due to finish for another 77 months. I have no emergency fund and the last few weeks of each month are always hard treading water. The whole situation is draining. All debts are defaulted around the 2019 mark and no one is chasing or threatening me but the thoughts of another 77 months of this is depressing me seriously. 

If I was to go self managed and stop paying for 3-4 months to build an emergency fund up for safety, and then start tackling them in a snowball method would the debtors likely start harassing me? I have not done cca requests but  I’m worried if I do that it will encourage them to go down court order route if they find them. I guess my question is, how long after going self managed would they likely tolerate not getting a payment before starting proceedings? 

fatbelly

You'd be fine. Creditors take court action if the debt is going to go statute barred. 3 or 4 months is nothing.

Stop paying, build an emergency fund, do cca requests.

Any court action must be preceded by a standard letter and form. If you ever were to get one, this is how to respond

https://debtcamel.co.uk/letter-before-claim-ccj/

I suppose insolvency (DRO, bankruptcy) is out of the question?

Weimsrock

Thanks fatbelly - I think I’m going to go for it. 

With regards to insolvency I don’t think it’s an option because I’m full time employed and have at least £200 per month left over so wouldn’t likely be accepted from my understanding. 

sourcrates

People tend to think that if they miss one or two payments then the companies unleash hell on them, but actually nothing could be further from the truth.

I have said this a million times, but the debt collection process is very, very slow, all your debts are defaulted, so you are no longer constrained by min payments or payment dates, or anything like that, debt management is an informal way to pay off your debts, there are no rules.

If you stop paying, all that will happen is collection activity will re-start, that means the odd automated phone call, generic text or letter, and this continues for months, years sometimes, these firms have 100`s of thousands of customers, they can`t take every one of them who doesn't pay to court, the system would grind to a halt.

They work on a numbers basis, hoping more will respond to contact, rather than ignore it, and only around 12% of cases nationwide will ever go to court.

So I agree with fatbelly above.

NeverendingDMP

I can see you've had some reassurance about missing payments and going self managed. Just wanted to say hi and I can sympathize with the dmp getting frustrating/boring/draining. If you are struggling till payday maybe having a small break,going self managed and having a little treat in the mean time to keep the motivation going might re energise you. 77 months feels like an age but you have come a long way and when self managing you have a lot more flexibility to pick the debts off by full and final settlements or just generally saying I'm gonna pick the smallest this year  and get rid for a psychologist boost!

fatbelly

FYI an Income Payment Agreement in bankruptcy only lasts 36 months