Question: When is a car loan not a car loan?
Answer: When it is a HP Agreement!
When acquiring a vehicle it is important to understand the difference between finance provided via a HP agreement and finance provided via an unsecured loan. There is an important difference.
(more…)Anybody can offer proposals for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) to their creditors provided they are insolvent. It is not necessary to own a home or indeed any other asset such as a car or boat. Your IVA proposal may be based on offering a lump sum or regular monthly payments from your income. If you do not have a lump sum to offer and you have no substantial assets then you need to have some level of regular disposable income to offer to them.
(more…)It could be described as the kindness of strangers but a remarkable event is taking place in Ireland at present. Bank of Scotland (Ireland) – BoSI – which operated the Halifax banks in Ireland ceased trading in Ireland last year and eight hundred of its former employees now manage its remaining mortgage book and other loans working for a new company called Certus. It is estimated that BoSI could have 50,000 mortgage customers in Ireland.
(more…)Being in a Debt Management Plan (DMP) should not in itself prevent you from offering proposals to your creditors for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA).
(more…)Believe it or not, in certain circumstances you can enter an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA), even if your disposable income is zero. In the current recession many people have lost their jobs and those lucky enough to secure a new job sometimes find that their new salary is substantially reduced from before.
(more…)It can be a concern for people who have become insolvent and who are considering entering into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) whether they can afford the fees incurred in the process. This is an understandable concern but it should not really be a worry. If the firm providing the insolvency service is worth its salt then this particular concern can be put to bed quickly and assuredly.
(more…)A current account is like a best friend of long standing, someone you have known for a long time, whom you trust, who is reliable and dependable, who doesn’t let you down and who knows all your (financial) secrets.
(more…)Ireland is suffering – or rather the people of Ireland are suffering. It is not just the so-called working classes but also the (lower) middle classes who have been hit by the economic crisis. Even the business and so-called upper classes are being squeezed by the recession. All towns and villages – as well as the cities – are saying farewell to a generation of young (and not so young) emigrants – well educated but unemployed, who wend their ways to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA as well as to some of the better performing economies of Europe such as Germany and France. Even the UK is an attractive destination for some of them.
(more…)Figures just released by the Insolvency Service show that the swing away from Bankruptcies to other insolvency solutions continued in the fourth quarter of 2010 (Q4 2010). Not since the first quarter of 2005 have the figures for bankruptcies in England and Wales been so low.
(more…)Time has almost stood still for Irish consumers as government busies itself in the implementation of NAMA. There has been plenty of talk about how the government is ‘bailing out the banks’. To be fair, the main players in the mortgage market are almost invisible in terms of seeking to repossess homes, even where mortgage re-payment is substantially in arrears.
(more…)If you enter into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA), you will generally be allowed to retain your car provided that it is necessary for work or family transport reasons and the car’s value is not excessive. Even if you acquired the car under a Hire Purchase (HP) agreement and are still paying up for it, you will normally be allowed to keep it, again provided that the value is not excessive and the monthly HP payments are reasonable.
(more…)Don’t let the title of this article fool you! You cannot legally keep a lump sum which comes to you by way of a liquidated inheritance while you are in an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA). Even failure to disclose to your supervisor the information that you have received such a lump sum is fraud and a criminal offence. You could go to prison for keeping your good news to yourself!
(more…)An essential precondition to be eligible to enter an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) is that you must first be insolvent. While there are alternative solutions for the insolvent debtor such as bankruptcy, this review will just consider the pros and cons of the IVA solution if you are unfortunate enough to find yourself in this predicament.
(more…)When financial circumstances get really desperate, sometimes the only choice that people feel that they have is to divest themselves of the assets which are costing them so much that the depth of their insolvency is increasing by the day. They may be considering entering into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) or petitioning for their own bankruptcy.
(more…)Whether you are already married or just contemplating getting married, if you have financial problems bordering on insolvency, it makes sense to consider the effects of the various solutions on your current or future spouse. Here we will look briefly at the Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) solution and the concerns that married (or co-habiting) people sometimes have about it.
(more…)Once an IVA is set up, you will be required to make your monthly payments towards it. Your Insolvency Practitioner will guide you through the process and will be responsible for handling your IVA while it is ongoing.
(more…)If you are considering offering proposals for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) to your creditors, you should be clear as to what debts must be included and which debts must be excluded.
(more…)A creditor may seek to have the Court issue a Charging Order against a debtor’s house, land or other property so that an unsecured debt may be turned into a secured debt via a charge on the debtor’s property.
(more…)When a debtor offers a Debt Management Plan (DMP) to creditors, it is an entirely voluntary process from the debtor’s point of view. The debtor can expect to be making (reduced) payments to creditors for many years if he or she is to repay all debts in full, although some creditors may agree to reduce or forego interest and penalties for a period of time. Nevertheless although a DMP can be a relatively attractive solution for creditors the long duration is a big disadvantage for the debtor.
(more…)Bankruptcy is a legal procedure whereby an insolvent individual may address the fact that he or she is unable to pay their debts. Through this procedure, the debtor can have his or her debts fully or partially written off within a finite period of time. A creditor may petition the court for the debtor’s bankruptcy or the debtor may petition the court for their own bankruptcy. The cost of initiating this procedure is currently about £600 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
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