Thinking of entering into an IVA - advice gratefully received

sourcrates

"Phoned these 'brokers' i think,. helpfuly..solutions one being IVA. Now i am confused.. They said, payback £115 for 60months….personally i got myself into this mess, i should have to pay to get out of it…but £115/month is tempting….able to save own monies…but it seems its not that simple then..after 60months…credit history remains awful, never be able to get credit/loan etc…and im renting so…would the next landlord even give me a chance? OR, perhaps is IVA a good solution?"

Where to start with this one…….OK, anyone or his wife can become an insolvency practitioner, and set up shop selling IVA`s, they are the one debt solution where regulation is most lax, lots of them, especially the ones who advertise on social media, are in it to claim the fee`s, they are not bothered if the IVA they are selling is right for you or not, all they want is the 6/8k in fee`s that they will make, you getting out of debt is of no importance to them.

An IVA is basically bankruptcy for homeowners, it affords them legal protection from enforcement action on their property, if you don`t own a house, you don`t need an IVA, as there are better debt solutions available to you.

The headline you quote above is what tends to attract people to them, but it will not apply to most of them, what they say may be true, if your income and expenses stay exactly the same for the full 60 months, but we know in reality this will not be so, your income will rise, so will your expenses, and so will your monthly payments, in fact you may end up paying back the full debt, plus interest, plus fee`s on top of that, and lots of "less than honest" IP`s will charge you much more than the standard rate for doing this.

You should never respond to IVA adds on social media, or what gets trawled up by a search engine, only IP`s recommended by the debt charities or National Debtline should be used, most of the rest are simply out to rob you, you must be so, so careful, as so far you are a textbook case for being mis-sold an IVA, you need to stop now before you sign up to something you will most certainly regret.

RAS

As sourcrates says. You need to get out your bargepole.

You sound like a classic target for mis-selling. And a third of IVAs fail.

The best thing that could happen is that the IVA failed quickly. You'd be left with the same amount of debt as nothing will have gone to your creditors and you'd have paid some fees to the IP.

You could set up a DMP once the failure is formal. But you'd still have to report having had an IVA if every asked.