Hello All
I have come across this forum today and found it helpful but still have a few question in relation to my own personal circumstances that someone may be able to help me answer I hope?
Currently my husband and I have a joint IVA, which started in Feb 2009 (after being advised by the IVA company not to go bankrupt – we have unsecured debts of £63,000). We have not missed any payment but have just undertaken our annual review and been informed we are in breach of the IVA. This is due to me declaring that we have two credit cards with debt of £5,500, which we had at the time of the IVA being organised that we did not declare. I declared these as I was trying to stop our monthly payments from increasing as we have been living every month in our overdraft facility.
The company has now arranged a meeting with our creditors for the 27th May 09 in which they vote to either allow the IVA to remain with an extension of a year totalling another 5 years of payments or declare us as bankrupt.
My question is am I better to wait for the outcome of this meeting or seek now to declare ourselves bankrupt? We have made the decision already that bankruptcy is the only way forward for us but need to undertake the process the right way to ensure it works for us.
Also due to being scared of not making the IVA payments when I got a car bill I couldn’t pay (£800) I went to my mortgage company in order to use this money to cover the bill. I have since not made mortgage payments for the last 3 months now due to also trying to clear out overdraft (I know this is wrong but I have got myself into such a mess am not thinking clearly now about our finances). I have however made nominal payments to the mortgage company. We have decided now as part of going bankrupt we do not want the house, however the house is currently in negative equity.
Can anyone advise us what do we need to do in order to get rid of the house but not be held responsible for any short fall in the mortgage?
Additionally our income would be deemed as quite high after our debts had been cleared by the bankruptcy so do I need to instruct a solicitor? As I am worried, I will swop the IVA payments for a bankruptcy payment order leaving us no better off in the long term.
I would be grateful for any advice received many thanks Ali G