Hi there
Well you firstly need to choose an insolvency practitioner to represent you, and they will need you to provide them with a lot of information, most of which I can summarise below:
Wage-slips
Property rental agreement
Property valuation for UK property
Mortgage redemption statement
Creditors statements of account
Bank statements
Tenancy agreement for UK property
Statement of income and expenditure
Details of any other assets
I use a standard questionnaire to gather this information, and a lot of other IP's I am sure do the same, so this could be e-mailed to you for completion and returned by post - as original signatitures are required for the authority to liaise with your creditors. Have you had your UK post diverted to Australia, or is someone collecting it for you over here?
So long as the rental income is covering your outgoings, you may be allowed to retain the property, but will need to raise equity on it during the final year of a five year IVA. If you are intending on keeping your UK base, as you may be intending to return here to live at some stage, then that justification ought to be acceptable to your creditors.
The proposal itself will take approximately 6-8 weeks to prepare, depending upon the speed that you get the information to the IP. You will need to sign the documents - but these can also be e-mailed to you, and then a creditors meeting needs to be called, which you do not need to attend. This will take a further three weeks or so. Providing your IP gets a majority vote of 75% of those creditors attending (on value rather than number) the IVA is deemed to be accepted and you then begin to make your monthly payments - electronically by standing order.
There can then be little contact between you and your IP over the next year, so long as you carry on making your payments. At the end of each year there is an overall review of your circumstances, where the IP will decide whether you can afford to increase your payments or not. For the review you will need to provide current wage-slips and details of your expenditure.
At the end of the five years, providing you have made all of your payments and dealt with any equity release (which will be based upon new borrowings of 85% loan to value) then you will receive a Certificate of Due Completion, at which stage you are released from the balance owing to creditors.
This is a very brief summary of what happens, and an insolvency practitioner will be able to explain this in greater detail to you if you decide that this is the most appropriate route to follow.
Good luck and do let us know how you get on.
Regards, Melanie Giles, Insolvency Practitioner for over 20 years.
To have me propose an IVA for you, please visit:
http://www.melaniegiles.com/ivaEnquiry.asp
See customer feedback at:
http://www.iva.com/iva_companies/IVA_Advice_Bureau.asp
