Hi WDD and welcome to the forum.

A couple of questions that will help the experts to add their thoughts:

Could you let us know whether your home is jointly owned or owned just by yourself?

How much do you think your home would sell for if you needed to sell it quickly?

Have you managed to keep up with your debt payments so far or are you getting behind?

Hi there
The property in in joint names with my wife.
The property would probably sell for ?ú280,000
I have managed to keep up will all my payments - though it is very difficult.

I don't think that a trust deed would be right for you WDD.

You have debts of around ?ú25000 with equity in your home of around ?ú60000. ?ú30000 of that equity is considered "yours", with ?ú30000 being your wifes.

That means you could potentially sell your home to repay your debts in full using your share of the equity in the property. Therefore your creditors would not accept an arrangement, such as a protected trust deed, where some of the debt might be written off.

Options such as a debt management plan or the Debt Arrangement Scheme look on the surface of it to be more suitable (and available). This isn't bad news, both options would be considered to be less serious than a trust deed.

How much do you think you can afford to pay towards your debts each month (after you have covered all of your eseential costs such as your mortgage, bills, travel, housekeeping etc)?

Perhaps around the ?ú200/?ú250 mark would ease my situation. Am paying more than double that at the moment..

A figure of ?ú200 to ?ú250 should be fine for the Debt Arrangement Scheme or a debt management plan WDD.

It will be important that you work through the numbers with a debt adviser so that they can confirm with you that this amount will be considered fair by your creditors, and will be manageable and sustainable for you.

Using the Debt Arrangement Scheme as an example:
A monthly sum of ?ú250 would clear the debt in eight years and four months. There would be no more interest and you (and your home) would be legally protected from your creditors.

There is a fairly conclusive article about DAS on the main menu of this website if you get the chance to have a read of it.