Warning - Long Post!
Hi, i'm hoping that someone will be able to answer a few questions for me. Our situation is slightly complicated as at present, we live in Guernsey in the Channel Islands, but are going back to the UK at the end of April. We have four children aged 7, 8, 11, 12.
Our unsecured debts total over £100k, our secured debts i.e. mortgage plus secured loan, total £420,000. Yuk, just typing that made me feel quite ill..
My husband is a director of a firm here but not as in a Companies House type of director, just a director of a limited company. He nets £6220 per month whilst I, at present anyway, net just over £1000 per month. (This will change back in the UK as he'll revert to 40% tax plus travelling expenses into London (£4000 a year). I know this is a hell of a lot of money and we're embarrassed as hell but my husband's divorce 13 years ago, basically crippled us and we've spiralled into this quagmire, and have absolutely no clue how to deal with it properly.
Our rent here in Guernsey is a whopping £2,300 per month (we have no choice as there are many restrictions on non-locals renting or buying here), and the rent we get from our tenants in the UK at the moment doesn't cover all our mortgage, so we also have to add another £450 on top of our rent - if that makes any sense?
So in a nutshell our debts are this:
Two overdrafts at Barclays which total £10,000
Three loans with Barclays - £1400 per month
One loan with Tesco - £340 per month
Egg Credit Card - up to its £15k limit (monthly payment £451pm)
Capital One CC - up to its £14k limit (monthly payment £400pm)
Mint - approx £4k (monthly payment £100pm)
Barclaycard - approx £9k (monthly payment £200pm)
Then our rent, mortgage, first plus loan (£876pm), cost of living here which is incredibly high, etc. We're in a right mess.
Anyway, my husband recently phoned up the National Debtline and talked to a very helpful person about how an IVA would work for us. Believe it or not the chap said he'd seen worse(!) and that before we go down the IVA road, maybe we should try and sort it ourselves.
So hubby has been putting together income and expenditure sheets, monthly payments, etc, etc, and has offered 25% of what we currently pay per month, for six month period, until we're back home and can look at things again. We sent the letters off on Monday.
Egg have been amenable, Mint not amenable, nor Tesco. Haven't heard yet from the other creditors but it's really disappointing so far to say the least.
The trouble is, even though we are robbing one overdraft to pay the other then to pay debts, we haven't defaulted on anything. Is this something that the creditors would hold against us? Also, even though creditors can say no to IVA's, surely it's preferable to bankruptcy? At least they'd get something back instead of hardly anything?
Also, if bankruptcy ends up being the only way out for us - would this affect my husband's position??
So many questions, so much info, sorry!
