Told my IVA is to fail : My road and diary to bankruptcy

Rylynn

Hi,

Okay where to start is the problem, so this is going to be a bit long, so I apologise in advance for that.

On Friday I made a call to Payplan who set up my IVA in August 2005 to be told they were going to fail my IVA, shame they had not informed me of this 4 months ago.

I paid into it from Sept 2005 to December 2006. I then fell ill, and had 11 months out of work, with what has now been diagnosed as ME. I informed Payplan as soon as I was off work and only on half pay, the guy said not to worry they would defer the payments. This continued all through my illness, I returned to work last November, on reduced hours of just 6 a week, increased to 9, then 12 hours. My own company (NHS) pushed me to increase the hours which Occ Health agreed to at 25 per week from 1 April this year.

Payplan were fine and said they would defer for another two months. Since then I have had another guy take the case, he said he would defer for 12 months, or I could consider bankruptcy and promised someone would call me, which they have not.

So Friday I rang them, to find out he no longer works there and should never have indicated that the arrangement could be defered for another 12 months, in fact she told me that 4 months ago it was added to my case that if no money had been paid in 4 months they would fail the IVA, I said why has no one bothered to even tell me this!

She did put me thru to their own bankruptcy advisor, who I have to say was very pleasant, and helpful. He told me about the courts, what would happen with them, and about the official receiver. He also gave me other information but having read now on here I am not sure it was the right information.

I am still only doing 25 hours per week, there is no way I can pay any money to anyone, and my own doctor advised Thursday that I should not increase me hours unless I want to be off again for months.

I entered into the IVA with good faith of paying my debts off, debts I stupidly took out in my own name, OH has long gone, and yet he was the one who benefited the most from the loans, only one was joint, and I bet he has never paid a dime to them since. They totalled at the time of the IVA over £58k, do not ask me how I got into so much debt and NO none of it is mortgage, I live in a council house.

So now I face bankruptcy, but I have so many questions and as I have not read anyone here having been in an IVA that has failed due to ill health I am not sure where I stand.

One where has the money I paid into it gone? have the creditors had even a penny of it? She said the practiioner would have to see the file, but she did not feel Payplan would make me bankrupt, but that is his decision, well of course they are not going to make me bankrupt that would cost them money! I was paying over £300 per month, so they have had quite a lot of money, but I have no idea can I claim that back to give to the OR, can he claim it on behalf of the creditors? This all seems to be a bit of a grey area, which I can find no answers to.

I did say this would be long so please bear with me.

I am a single mum now, with a 13 year old son, but my mother aged 73 also lives with me. She still works full time (although she cannot keep that up much longer). In the IVA it was put in my I&E that she gave me £200 per month, which is true, in fact recently she has given me more as we are finding it hard to cope. This guy I spoke to there said say the same on the I&E for the br, he also told me if I need my car to get to work and it is not valued at over £2000 it will be exempt, that is not what I am reading on here either! I use the car to get to work, the hospital, doctors, Occupational Health, and also to take my son (who is chronically asthmatic) to school in the winter months.

If from what I read here a OHs salary cannot be used, do I take they cannot use my mothers either? We pay full rent and council tax and I am not in arrears with any utility bills and can prove what I pay monthly from those bills and my bank account.

Which brings me to bank accounts, under the IVA I was given options on where to open one, Barclays were out as they were one of my main creditors, so I went to Nat West, I only have a debit solo card, no cheque book and no overdraft.

In fact since my IVA I have taken out no credit at all as I am not allowed to, and do not want to either, even with Provident keep sending me letters offering me more and more money at some huge interest payment, they must think I am mad or something!

So I take it I need to withdraw all my money from this account, and some people on here say do not open another account until the BR and others seem to have opened accounts with the co-op can someone clear this up for me please, do I open one now? I have to have my wages paid into an account, I could use my mothers for a while? but then what do I tell the OR if the BR goes ahead.

I have no assets other than the car which I have looked up today it is worth around £1300, and the IVA when issued were not interested in it.

I also pay into an NHS pension, but now on reduced hours and wages this is less, and not worth much as I have only been in it for 5 years.

I see on another site that if I am on a low income which I now am, I can ask the court to waive the court fees, I take it this is true?

It is really odd, when I applied for the IVA I attended the meeting and it failed, the woman at the time said what will you do now, I said apply to become bankrupt, she said OH no don't do that give me another 7 days and I will apply again, hey ho, it passed, I look back now and wonder why the hell I did not go bankrupt then and save all this worry.

ME is kicked off under stress as well as doing too much, so this lot is not helping my health, let alone my sleeping!

I am going to make a list of TO DO Next week, so if any of you nice people can help me it will be greatly appreciated it has taken me 10 hours to pluck up enough courage to post this!

I felt bad enough over going for an IVA, but I got through that, and never expected to suddenly be ill for so long, I am not scared of the court as this guy told me, NO they will not want doctors letters, bills, bank statements, that is the OR which happens after the BR is given.

My other concern now is, I have no records of anything, I ditched it all when the IVA was given as I seriously thought that was it 5 years and it would be all over. So I have no idea what I owe anyone at this point in time, will Payplan give me those details when they write to me officially next week? As I need to move on this as soon as I can.

I am going to have to borrow the £500 is it to make myself bankrupt as it is, is that a problem? I will be borrowing it from a friend?

Sorry this is so long, and with so many questions, but I do hope someone here can steer me right on some of them.:beer:

Rylynn

Dez-Titute

Hi Rylynn,

A brilliant post and like you say a long one.Not had much sleep so its going to take me a while to digest.Will get back soon.Dez

dalip

First off Welcome to the family:D .

We will all do our utmost to help you through all this. You will find some will answers some of you questions and then others will answer the rest. All depends on our own experiences and knowledge.

First off ring your local court and find out what system they operate for bc,as some do a drop in and wait for bc,others do it by appointment. Also ask them how many copies of the SOA(statement of affairs)you need,it's normally 3 but some courts only ask for 1 and photo copy them for you.You can fill these in on-line or print them off and do them by hand. You will fid them at www.inolvency.gov.uk

When you come to fill in your outgoings and income(section 6 question 6.7)it asks for other members in your housholds contirbutions, this is where you put your mums £200.

As far as the car is concerned i don't see a problem with you keeping it but it is totally up to th OR. Those that don't get to keep them are usually those who do not work or where the car is of a high value.


As far as bank accounts are concerned if nat west have allowed you to keep it with an IVA then it may be ok but(is it a step account?)) i would ring and ask them. It is the bank which closes the accounts not the OR. The other option would be to open a co-op cashminder now and get things changed over. You can use you mums account and the OR will be fine with this, i used my OH and there was no problem.

In regards to no records, just explain why you don't have any records. It is understandable most people shredd statements ect now so the OR will get anything he needs. As long as you know who your creditors are there should be no problems.You say you had a joint debt with your OH, when you go bc the debt will pass to him and they will try to recover that money from him,it will not be included in your bc.


Well i hope that helps a little. Any more questions do not be afraid to ask, we have all been there when things get confusing and bog us down.So don't sit there to scared to post we will be more than happy to help.D

Dez-Titute

Thanks Dalip,
Good Morning,could'nt quite get my head round all that info not this early anyway.:T

dalip

Morning dez. We got a fantastic morn here.BBQ weather:j . Luckily i am a morn person so my brain(the little bit i have:D )works best in the morn.D

Dez-Titute

Best time of the day,sun really bright this morning I think we're in for a scorcher.

debt_doctor

Hi,

Yet another completely mis sold IVA and yet again its with Payplan ! Whilst Ido agree that if an IVA is appropriate for you then Payplan will be one of the cheapest one's around, never use them as your source of advice when weighing up your options. Payplan are a profit making company, not a charity.

Now back to this case, first call is a debt charity as in my sig. The court fee of £ 150 can be waived in certain circumstances, the deposit at £ 345 is always payable.

The OR will write to payplan to obtain your creditor information, no need to worry there. Your friend will have to 'give':rolleyes: you the money for BR, the debt would be written off in your BR.

Personally I would open an account with Barclays or the CO OP now, most dont have a problem post BR.

Best

DD

fermi

Quick post.

You may well be able to keep the car, but it is best to think about how you might make a case for that. It needs to be necessary for your domestic/work needs, rather than just convenient.

See for more info: Cars and Bankruptcy

For paperwork, the OR will obtain all the documentation directly from the IP/PayPlan if necessary, or from the creditors. There is no need to worry on that score.

While the OR can't claim any of your mothers income, they will need to know how much she contributes to the shared household expenses.

Tigerlily31

Hi Rylynn,

Quick post and just to say welcome. I had an IVA with payplan too and went BR last Monday. If you'de like any info PM me and I'll try my best to ptu you at ease and help.

Take care,
Tigerlily x

Dez-Titute

Morning Tiger,Hope your well.

mrskingandthescarecrow

Hi, I have an IVA too that I've paid thousands into. I am in arrears with mine as the budget we are trying to live to is impossible. Then when the cooker blew up and the car needed a lot of repair work we just couldn't pay everything and fell behind with the payments. I phoned my IVA company (Now Grant Thornton but was set up with Debt Matters) and they told me that if they IVA fails then we will lose all the money we have paid in and the original amounts owed to the Creditors will become due.

So who gets all the money? Looks like the IVA Co pockets the lot. So it also leaves little faith to carry on paying into it knowing that if it does fail in the future that's even more money down the pan.

We too wish we had just gone bankrupt now but we have a mortgaged property so opted for the IVA. Now we are considering bankruptcy even with the house as it's just not worth the stress, which is causing constant arguments and my OH is eyeing the door up, which would mean our IVA would definitely fail and I couldn't afford the mortgage on my own so we would lose the house anyway.

We too feel our IVA was mis-sold as they didn't let out about the thousands of pounds fees they were planning to take from us. The advice I gathered off this site and from the free debt charities I spoke to was that if I could prove that they had withheld that information before we signed then we could make a damages claim via the Financial Ombudsman and maybe get the money back we paid in but that's just a maybe.

In the meantime, I think bankruptcy is going to be the best option having literally tried everything else as these IVAs only seem to be benefiting one party and it's not the Creditors or the Debtors!