Insolvent persons who are considering entering into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) with their creditors are often concerned as to whether the world generally and certain others in particular will find out about them and learn that they are in financial trouble.
(more…)A current account is like a best friend of long standing, someone you have known for a long time and whom you trust to help you. It is reliable and dependable. Sometimes you make demands on your current account that are bordering on unreasonable and you hope that it won’t let you down. Like a good friend it gives even when there is little or nothing left to give. Your financial secrets can be gleaned from perusal of your current account records but like your friend it keeps these secrets to itself and protects your confidentiality. If one’s current accounts could talk they would have many stories to tell. Your ups and downs for many years are chronicled therein and that is information that you would be reluctant to share even with a best friend.
(more…)A concern for people who find themselves insolvent and who are considering entering into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) is whether they can afford the costs and fees of the process. While this is an understandable concern, it should not really be a worry. Firms which provide insolvency services can reassure debtors on this matter and put debtors’ fears to bed quickly.
(more…)When an insolvent debtor enters into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) with creditors, all unsecured accounts automatically go into default, given that the debtor immediately ceases to comply with the terms and conditions of the relevant credit agreements.
(more…)Any good proposal for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) will include a sensible, realistic and well constructed Income and Expenditure Statement (I&E). For anyone who is contemplating offering proposals to creditors for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement, it may be a concern as to whether creditors will look for the last penny of disposable income to be contributed to the IVA, with no provision for emergency expenditure or for ‘rainy day’ events. These events might include illness or injury to a member of the family or unexpected vehicle breakdown or the necessary replacement of a domestic appliance such as a heater or cooker.
(more…)Individual Voluntary Arrangements are pretty flexible, but there is a typical set of requirements for an IVA to be likely to go ahead. IVAs are for personal unsecured debts, and do not usually cover secured debt such as mortgages, although an IVA may be used as one measure in reducing the financial strain of multiple debts.
(more…)When you go through the IVA process, you will need to use the services of a licensed Insolvency Practitioner. The IP will have a varied set of responsibilities as the IVA is set up and then administered. An Individual Voluntary Arrangement is a legal contract binding you and your creditors to the agreement, and only licensed IPs can carry out the necessary legal steps for an IVA to proceed.
(more…)The purpose of these articles is to provide simple and straightforward answers to questions that people would like to ask about IVAs and insolvency in general but may refrain from doing so for all sorts of reasons. Let’s start by looking at a situation when somebody is planning to get married but is afraid that their fiancé may be insolvent and that their insolvent fiancé’s creditors might seize their assets. While love may be blind, it would be normal for couples to disclose to each other the state of their finances before getting married or even starting to co-habit. This is sensible because failure to disclose financial problems before starting to live together could lead to a breakdown of trust later on in the relationship when one party turns out to be insolvent and their financial difficulties come to the attention of the other solvent party.
(more…)In trying to deal with personal insolvency it is almost inevitable that the debtor will have to consider the two principal solutions available in the U&K, namely entering into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) or petitioning for Bankruptcy.
(more…)A Debt Management Plan (DMP) is an informal flexible approach for resolving a person’s personal debt problems whereby creditors are repaid in full over a period of time. The rate at which creditors are paid is based on what the person can afford and thus a DMP can last for a long time, depending on the debtor’s personal circumstances. If you engage a Debt Management Company to assist you it can estimate the length of the arrangement, once it has received all your personal information.
(more…)If you are considering entering into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) with your creditors you will naturally want to be confident that they will approve your IVA proposal. The overriding question is whether your offer will be sufficiently attractive to at least 75% of those creditors who choose to exercise their right to vote to persuade them to accept your proposals. So what do creditors or to be more precise your particular creditors want to see in your proposal documents.
(more…)People sometimes have difficulty in distinguishing between different types of personal debt and lenders can sometimes be less than helpful in explaining these differences. One distinction which is important to understand is whether a personal debt is secured or unsecured. Take for example a situation where you are considering buying a car or some other type of motor vehicle.
(more…)Many of us dream of owning our own home or even our own car. In the current recession it may just remain a dream but for the lucky few or should that be the thrifty few, it remains a real ambition. Provided that one can control one’s debts, and have a reasonable level of regular income then it is possible to go from owing to owning. There has been a huge growth in personal indebtedness over the last ten or more years. It is generally agreed that the use or perhaps more accurately the misuse of credit cards is largely to blame for consumers getting into debt which may be beyond their ability to repay. It is not the credit card in itself that is at fault. It would be irrational to assign the blame to a piece of encoded plastic. In truth the blame lies with us who borrowed too much money and with the credit industry which extended too much credit to us. Neither we the borrowers nor they the lenders paid anything like sufficient attention as to whether we could repay our debts.
(more…)Capital punishment for even the most heinous crimes has been abolished in most western democracies with some significant exceptions such as the USA. In regard to debt however, the USA has a most benign set of laws dealing with insolvency both personal and corporate. Contrasting significantly in both of these matters is the Republic of Ireland. The death penalty has been long abolished in Ireland but the personal insolvency regime there has been described by many august authorities as unpractical, unused, excessively costly and overly penal.
(more…)If you owe money to banks or other creditors they have the right to seek the repayment of these debts in accordance with the terms and conditions under which the funds were borrowed or the liability was incurred in the first place. If however the debtor cannot or will not comply with the agreed repayment schedule then creditors can avail of a wide variety of means to compel the delinquent debtor to repay them the monies they are owed. These include getting a County Court Judgment (CCJ) against the debtor and following this up with action by bailiffs which might include the seizure of goods or other assets.
(more…)Many students who expect to graduate this year will have debts of £25,000 or more to dampen their enthusiasm as they seek to enter a less than buoyant jobs market. Surveys have found that half of those currently graduating expect that it will take them at least ten years to repay their student debts while one in ten think it could take as long as twenty years to be debt free. With tuition fees inexorably increasing year on year, average student debt could rise to as much as £80,000.
(more…)Justice Minister Alan Shatter recently revealed the specifics of the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill which is going to provide the consequence of reducing the term of bankruptcy in Ireland. Bankrupts according to the proposed new law will ‘enjoy’ guaranteed release from bankruptcy after twelve years but will be legally permitted to make an application for release from bankruptcy after five years.
(more…)Debt Management is a simple process which you can use to reduce and clear all your outstanding debts without the need to obtain any further credit than what you already have. If you choose to use a debt management company to assist you in this process, it will deal directly with your creditors and it will negotiate with your creditors on your behalf. It will seek the agreement of your creditors to drop all charges on your loan accounts and to freeze all interest. There are a number of benefits for you the debtor and for your creditors arising from your entering into and adhering to the terms of a debt management plan.
(more…)A lot of effective compensation claims have been made and continue to be made against lenders with regards to Payment Protection Insurance (PPI). Any person who considers that they may have been miss-sold a PPI policy is eligible to claim against the lender and a large number of such borrowers already have garnered damages from the offending creditors.
In the context of an individual entering into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) where one or more loan companies offered PPI previously, the consumer could make a claim for the purpose of compensation against any financial institution who miss-sold this type of protection plan. The fact that payment of the Payment protection insurance premiums may have contributed to the borrower’s failure to pay off their debts and obligated the person in debt to go into an IVA is not applicable.
When people think about their serious debt problems they often think of how dreadful it would be if they had to go bankrupt. Whether they petition for their own bankruptcy or one of their creditors petitions for it, the stigma or perceived stigma of bankruptcy is just about the worst feeling a debtor can have. However, there are other real and practical remedies other than personal bankruptcy. It may even be better for both the debtor and his or her creditors to use an alternative procedure to bankruptcy.
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