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Hi,

Well finally it looks like we are getting somewhere. Thomas Charles have been fantastic. Got our paperwork through today and all looks ok. The lady at Thomas Charles has told us that Melanie Giles was the only IP they deal with willing to take on our case so
*****A BIG THANK YOU TO MELANIE YOU ARE A TOTAL STAR!*****

The monthly payment of £1120 leaves us with nothing (although road tax, clothing, dentists etc) are catered for in there. We will not be able to have even a single night out in the next 5 years but hey, we got ourselves in this mess so we have to sacifice whatever it takes to get out of it, as long as there is food on the table and a roof over our heads, anything else I can deal with.

Anyway, we have been told to stop paying all creditors straight away. Is this right? I am so scared to do this as we are paying them reduced sums at the minute. Also, my mortgage is a together mortgage with Northern Rock and the payment comes out of my bank for the secured and unsecured elemnets of it as one payment does anyone know how I can stop paying the unsecured bit without missing an actual mortgage payment?

thank you for any advice
Andrea

hi only passion i have a together mortgage and was advised to continue paying both amounts until creditors meeting, however mine was rejected, when i telephoned northern rock to ask them to split the payments so i could put the unsecured part into a DMP they told me that it didn;t matter what amount i paid they would still apportion money from what i paid into the unsecured loan and it would look like i wasn't paying full amounts on both, they wouldn;t entertain the DMP, i am sure melanie will advise you on this, i was warned that as soon as i stopped paying the unsecured amount that northeren rock move quickly to try and secure the loan on your property but again i am sure melanie will put you right there also, i was also told several times that i would find that this unsecured part was actually secured, but it comes on my statement as unsecured and NR confirmed to me it was unsecured.
kerri

Hi Andrea

What stage are you at now? Have Thomas Charles given you the figures and presented the paperwork or Melanie? I ask because like you I have been referred to Melanie via TC and I met with her a week ago to discuss my situation. We have a tendency to err on the low side when working out our expenditure because we want to be able to offer as much as possible to get the IVA approved. However Melanie looked at my figures and revised some of them upwards as I hadn't considered certain items. As she has said in many of her posts she also builds in a £50 emergency fund. So if you haven't met with her yet you may find your amounts will differ slightly to what TC proposed. The important thing to remember is that you are agreeing to this for 60 months or 260 weeks or 1826 days and it has to be sustainable. We keep reading on here of people's IVA's failing because they accepted much higher payments than the original proposal. If we had access to the figures I'm sure Melanie would have a very high percentage of completed IVAs compared to some of the companies we read about on here.
Melanie gives up a lot of her free time to answer everybody's questions on here and she is obviously very good at what she does. So, like you I was very pleased to learn that she was going to be my IP.

Good luck with everything

Dave

Hi
Kerri thanks for the reply regarding the mortgage that is a great help.

Dave, I have not yet met up with Melanie, just literally received confirmation today that she would take on our case. I know we can meet the repayment I am confident of that but am sure Melanie will go over the figures and provide a little "breathing space" in the budget if necessary, it would be great to have that but only time will tell what will be officially proposed to creditors.

I have said this so many times but at the grand age of 24 I never ever want another loan, credit card, store card or even car loan in my life! A mortgage is the only form of borrowing I vow I will ever have!

Good luck with your propsal Dave.

Andrea

Hi Andrea

Well we have lots of things to talk about off line, but can I just clarify one point about Northern Rock together mortgages.

They are clearly a combination of a secured element and an unsecured loan. Look at any statement of account from them and they clearly split the payments up. So for anyone with this product in the process of proposing an IVA, stop the direct debit or standing order and send a cheque for the secured element only.

Also include a letter instructing them to allocate the payment directly against the secured element. If they then split the payment in any other way, you have a legal right of recourse against them.

Regards, Melanie Giles, Insolvency Practitioner for over 20 years.

For further details contact me at http://www.melaniegiles.com and view my IVA blog at: http://melaniegiles.blogs.iva.co.uk

melanie can i ask what that means, as you know i am still paying both of mine under the DMP i have stopped the direct debit and pay over the phone now when it is due, what they said to me when i enquired about splitting for the DMP was that if i missed one payment of the unsecured element legal proceedings would be started against me immediatly, this could just be a frightener, but they did say any monies paid if i didn;t pay the full monthly balance would be split, if i could stop the unsecured element and put it in the DMP then all the creditors would be getting a better return whilst i am waiting to hear off this job.
thanks kerri

Kerri

The unfortunate thing about DMP's is that you have no legal protection and if Northern Rock say they will take you to Court then there is nothing stopping them doing so. My point above, however, was that they cannot decide for themselves to allocate someone's payments towards a secured debt to their unsecured element.

You are correct that Northern Rock are being preferred at the expense of your other creditors, but in a DMP there are no real rules!

Regards, Melanie Giles, Insolvency Practitioner for over 20 years.

For further details contact me at http://www.melaniegiles.com and view my IVA blog at: http://melaniegiles.blogs.iva.co.uk

Hi Andrea
We had a together mortgage with Northern Rock. I paid mine until before the Creditors Meeting for no other reason than I had been so used to paying it, it went out of my head. I did stop it last month and they have been very good with me and Ihave had no problems with them so far. I stopped paying my creditors more or less straight away - I contacted Thomas Charles in November having been with CCCS - I tried to stop CCCS making the DMP payment in November but it was too late as they had started to distribute it but I paid nothing after that - to be honest the DMP started in September and most creditors hadn't been paid anything aside from token payments since June of last year. I sent creditors the form provided by Thomas Charles and indeed Melanie confirming that I was in the process of applying for an IVA and on the whole most of them left me alone apart from one or two.
Thomas Charles assessed me at having to pay 1367 per month and when I met with Melanie we reduced that to 1185 so it will be your meeting with Melanie which will clarify the proposal figures and she will take you through everything. We had modifications requested and are about to make out first payment of 1380.
You will feel better after your meeting with Melanie - everything is explained in detail and you have the chance to ask any questions you need to. Don't worry Andrea - you are in a very safe pair of hands I can assure you!!