After some Advice on an IVA....

[blaggard]

I'm just saying this is what I chose. I had the option of bankruptcy and decided against it. around a third of my monthly money goes to repayments now. There's around 5 years left to pay until I'm 100% clear

But there was no choice for me, without going into details I was left with just one option, a DRO.

[blaggard]

Well theres one other option and I'm sure I'll be burnt for saying this (although during the day I may batch trace the address of up to 5000 default debtors !)

It will only work if you are in rented accommodation with no assets to attach a judgement debt to and you also need to change your telephone number and have a new clean basic bank account with a bank you have never banked with before.

Do nothing. Yep that right just get on with your life and forget about the money you owe. Start a fresh.

The result will be all your debts will eventually be farmed out to DCA's and ultimately become unenforceable.

Your post man will be busy delivering the final notices and then the very final notices and then the very very final notices and then ... it will be sold on a new tear of DCA who paid even less for your debt and will repeat the process.

When the debt get sold at around 7p in the pound you may if your lucky get a door knock from an agent.

These people are all self employed working on a commission and have in their pocket id cards for a whole host of DCA's depending on which hat they have on when they visit you.

Most of them do not have a consumer credit licence and all most all of them have failed to register with the ICO in accordance with the Data Protection Act.

Both serious criminal offences you may like to remind them of as they shut your garden gate.

At that stage the debts have often been reassigned so many times often without sending you the statutory notice of assignment. Even worse when two different DCA try to collect the same debt which is a serious offence.

If you can put up with the letters, change your telephone numbers and ask the odd self employed door knocker for his none existent CC licence then in six years so long as you do not acknowledge the debt your clear and its wiped from your credit reference file. .... It wont stop the letters though..

Because of the now prohibited cost of issuing County Court proceeding most creditors settle for a reduce amount by selling the debt to DCA's usually within a few months of default.

DCA's rarely if ever go to Court.

If your really unlucky because you live next door to the local self employed door knocker there is alway the Protection from Harassment Act which has already been successfully used to stop such tactics.

The Labour government in their last year tabled a law to allowed bailiffs to force their way in to a persons home and secure goods to the value of a Judgment.

At the moment they can only enter through open doors and windows.

(the bailiffs magazine has a running question to its readers. how many times have they climbed through a window. One only has to look at the average bailiff to know the answer each year is always in the single figures !)

This idea was both unpopular with bailiffs, courts and much of the general public. I was please to see this government has scraped it.

This effectively is what a DRO does, it gives it some legal weight and forces creditors to accept that they must leave their debtors alone for the period of the moratorium and if their circumstances have not improved at the end they must right off the outstanding accounts. They can appeal when the DRO is granted but because it is administered by The Insolvency Service they rarely do, a DRO (or full Bankruptcy) is not granted lightly and assets are taken into account.