Hello heidinthesand and welcome to the forum.

Are you comfortable that the expenditure you have specified on the CCCS Debt Remedy website is manageable and sustainable?

Provided that it is, you seem to have a very good handle on the options available to you already.

DAS looks likely to run for around 60 months. This period would be extended very significantly if your wife's self-employed income were to go away.

Trust deeds would normally run for 36 months (it can be longer in certain circumstances) and may fail or be extended significantly if there was a dramatic loss of income.

The release of equity via the conventional means of a remortgage is effectively a non-option at the moment given lending conditions. This may change in three years time but I think most people would find this to be an unlikely prospect.

If the equity cannot be released a third party could step in with funds (if you're lucky enough to have someone that can/would do that) or, given you have a relatively high disposable income currently, you may be able to agree further monthly payments to cover the sum with the trust deed company.

Details of the operating company behind this website are in the footer below. You'll have noticed that in practice the site works collaboratively. There are three trust deed companies contributing, site members sharing personal experience, a support team of qualified debt advisors and an IFA. We recently added a page on the Debt Arrangement Scheme provided for us directly by the Accountant in Bankruptcy. Earlier this year we initiated a dialogue with the free money advice sector who we hope will be contributing to the site directly in the near future.

What are your feelings towards the options open to you?

Hi heidinthesand.

Sounds like you need a new user name, as you've obviously pulled you head out of the sand and have a pretty good handle on your situation.

Certainly a DAS looks like a good option, if you are being realistic about your income/expenditure. Likewise a trust deed should work.

As trust deed assistant says, you would probably be looking at making extra contributions to "buy out" any equity in the property. Obviously this level of equity should be clarified before entering the trust deed so you know exactly how this will work and how long you would be in a trust deed for.

From 15th November it will be possible to propose a trust deed on the basis that the equity (or some of it) in your home is not required to be realised/paid in. It would still be subject to creditor approval, but depending on the actual level of equity it may be possible that you could complete your trust deeds in only 3 years.

If you wish to look seriously at the trust deed option I would recommend that you contact an insolvency professional to discuss your situation in more detail.

Thanks for your replies: I am going to seek advice re: deed trust from an IP and I'm trying to get an appointment for a DAS advisor as well. I have lots of questions!

Kevin said

From 15th November it will be possible to propose a trust deed on the basis that the equity (or some of it) in your home is not required to be realised/paid in. It would still be subject to creditor approval, but depending on the actual level of equity it may be possible that you could complete your trust deeds in only 3 years.[/unquote]

Can you point me in the direction of any more specific info on this ammendment?

Is there any way a trustdeed can be taken out jointly or do they have to be individual?

Individually I owe 1 creditor about 33% of MY total debt and my wife owes one of hers almost 37%. Obviously if our debts are combined these percentages shrink. We DO owe the same creditor seperately: How does this affect the balance of power amongst the creditors?

We could probably settle our 4 smallest debts over the next 2 or 3 months at the expense of the larger ones: is this something we should be thinking about?

We don't currently have life insurance in place; am I correct in saying that this is an additional expense the creditors might not object to?

What about healthcare? If we end up on a strict budget for the duration of a DMP or DAS, ?é?ú30 a month to somebody like HSA would make a real difference with dentists and opticians bills. Would this be seen as reasonable, or taking the pee?

Think about changing my user name to heidsabouttaeburst. . . .

Hello heidinthesand,

The developments described by Kevin are very new and I'm not aware of any specific resources to point you towards that will explain how this will work in practice. Kevin, Julie or Mark may be able to point you towards something.

A trust deed is signed individually. A couple (if they chose to) would sign two trust deeds, though of course their connected circumstances should be taken into account in a co-ordinated way.

Major creditors can exert control over whether a trust deed becomes protected. However companies that handle protected trust deeds understand the criteria by which these creditors accept or reject them. Therefore a good company will be able to point you towards any significant risks in advance of you signing anything so that you can make an informed decision about whether to proceed or not.

If you have identified that your current debt repayments are not affordable I would not suggest that you now take time to clear some of the smaller ones. There is no particular benefit in doing so in terms of your overall situation and there may in fact be risks associated with this type of action. Better to deal with the underlying wider problem that you have identified.

Reasonable levels of life insurance would normally be considered acceptable expenditure. I guess that there may be some risk that some creditors might consider health insurance excessive given that you have access to the NHS, though of course some dental and/or optician needs might fall outside of that so a good counter-argument exists as well. If you take advice from any particular DAS adviser or trust deed company I'd suggest you talk this through with them.