www.iva.co.uk

I am a postman earning £19000 a year gross and my wife and I are in our third year of an IVA this October when we have our annual review.
We have been really struggling financially especially for the last eight months and are already one month in arrears with our mortgage.We desperately need more income into our home and my wife who has never worked since we had children ten years ago will have to find employment.I rang my IP today with an income and expenditure and they came to the conclusion that my payments could not be reduced.When I mentioned our need for more income in the home with my wife going out to work she told me our IVA payments would rise which I did expect.
My wife could get a well paid job as a teaching assistant earning anything from £19000 to £22000 a year.My worry is as well as losing tax credits we will also be paying out far more into our IVA.It seems to me that we are in a catch 22 situation having no hope of any extra income into our home because my wife would be working just to pay more into our IVA.We feel so hopeless in a no win situation with our bills and mortgage getting further behind.Is there a limit as to what the IP can take from you each month?
We have another two years yet to pay from October and cannot wait till the IVA comes to an end for my wife to start work.Are our hands really tied so much, because if this is the case we can wave goodbye to our home which I have owned for twelve years and struggle on with ever mounting bills.Don't know what to do.
Kind Regards
David.

Hi David and welcome to the forum

If your income and expenditure shows that you are struggling, and all areas of expenditure can be justified, I cannot see why your IVA payments cannot be reduced. What reason did your IP give you for her decision.

If your disposable income increases as a result of your wife going out to work, and your IVA is in accordance with the IVA protocol, your payments should only increase by 50% of the increase, in which case you and your family would benefit from the other 50%. You would need, however, to check the terms of your own IVA proposal to see if this was applicable to you.

I suggest another chat with your IP on this matter to get some further answers from her - going into arrears with your mortgage, to ensure your IVA is paid, does not make sense.

Thanks very much for your reply it was very much appreciated.The reason she gave me for saying that our payments could not be reduced was after I had given her my I & E figures she noticed there was a small amount of money left at the end of each month.
She said that this was disposable income and could be used to raise our payments.When I worked out our I & E the difference between the two really shocked us because it worked out around £40.00 a week left over for any unforeseen circumstances such as car maintenance etc.
I think also that I was to lenient on the figures that I gave her but I was only trying to be honest. There is no way we can afford to pay more on the basis of this small amount left over at the end of each month.What about childrens birthdays and Christmas etc, do they account for this.
On another note when you speak of the 50% increase (if my wife goes out to work) does this mean another £75.00 added onto our £150.00 a month payment or 50% of my wife's monthly wage ( say £500.00 of a salary of £1000 a month )
Thanks again for all your help.
Kind Regards
David.

Hi,

The 50% uplift means you keep half of your wife's salary and the IVA payment is increased by the other half.

Regards.

Thanks very much for that. I understand what this 50% thing means now.
Kind Regards
David.

xmas and birthdays are not given an allowance(pay for these through savings elsewhere on your budget I am afraid) but you mentioned car maintenance which you should have a monthly allowance for.

I dont know how any family car survive on one wage,we have always had 2 coming in and still it wasnt enough!!

Paul

Your case administrator has done nothing wrong - if you presented her with those figures then she has calculated correctly. What concerns me is that you do not appear to have a usual budget for things like car maintenance. I suggest that you get your case administrator to take you through the CCCS allowances so that you can ensure you know the sort of areas of expenditure which are acceptable to creditors.

Just spoke to my administrator and she says that they cannot give out the CCCS allowances.I just have to make sure that I log all expenditure down which goes out of our home.
Seems crazy to me that I don't know what areas I can add into my expenditure which are acceptable to creditors.This is the reason in the first place that my expenditure figures were to low and I did'nt add things in that I should have and now my payments cannot be dropped.
She told me also today that my payments still cannot be dropped on the basis of the things that I have missed of such as prescriptions,car maintenance,school trips,glasses / dental.
Just seems they don't give you the information you need.
I will have to wait until October for my annual review and present a fresh I & E then.
Thanks for you advice.
David.

Which do you need? Medical,dental,optical allowance is £44 per month for a family, school meals and trips are £46 per child, car maintenance is £30 and anything else you need you can ask.

David I know how you feel. My I&E shows that I should be paying £200 less but my the admin person that looks after my case hasn't adjusted my payments it has been like that for 2 years now. She says if they adjust the payments this year I will have to pay the IVA for longer and I don't want that I just want the IVA to end. So another year of struggling I have no overtime any more because I can work £250 of overtime per month until I have to inform my IP but we haven't been offered overtime from March this year and I can really feel the struggle

Payments for IVA can be adjusted to go up and down as the official wording goes....however, even without a minimum dividend payable, it is probably not the case that people could end up paying from 42p(as agreed) to the pound to 13p to the pound and expect creditors to accept it? To say well .....at least the creditors get something back becomes perverse situation. There must be flexiblity but it is within the remit of honouring the IVA agreement.

Generally despite the official wording, IVA firms do not like reducing payments as the whole sum has to be reworked and years would be added.More administration and more sundry fees included.

If someone owns me £50 and I allow him £40 to pay back......If he came back and say how about £20 I am sure that is going cause a problem.

The I/E must be set right from the start...for all provisions...some caseworkers factor in other allowed items that you may not need yet giving you some future proofing.Once that amount is set the only real way is up and not down.

IVA are five years long committment at least(plus some extra time) it is a hard slog.....especially now.

Going BR isn't a bad idea if the Iva payment is unbearable. It takes an Olympic spirit and endurance to complete an IVA.