Hi there

I'm back again after getting some advice from yourselves in Nov 2011. Ex husband and I have separate trust deeds which became protected in July 2009. We separated later that month and have been living in separate properties since Dec 2009. We both made 2 contributions to our TDs and have not made contributions since. When we signed TD, the amount of equity in the family home was 5K. We received nothing in writing from TD except one or two I&E forms which resulted in a phonecall from TD admin to say TD being extended to 5 years. As we are heading for divorce etc, we have asked to deal with equity now. TD sent surveyer and valued property at 125K, an astonishing 25K more than the original valuation at start of TD. I asked for advice here and asked a few local estate agents to give an estimation of the current value of our property and they estimated the value to be between 100-110K realistically. I made the following offer to the Trustee in writing as follows:

Dear Mr XXXXX

Re: Settlement of Equity

Thank you for your recent letter regarding the settlement of equity on our property as part of our Protected Trust Deeds. I note that * have valued the property at £125000. In 2009, * received an initial valuation of the property at £100000 before the Trust Deed became protected. We feel it is unlikely that the true valuation of the property has increased by 25% in two years. We have engaged the services of a local Estate Agent in giving us their estimated valuation based on their experiences of selling property in this area. They feel that the property value is in the region of £100000 to £110000. We enclose the letter from them to confirm this.

At the present time, we are in a position to offer £10000 to discharge your interest in our property. This offer is coming from a third party and there is no way of increasing this offer.

We would like you to take into consideration the following points when deciding if this offer would be sufficient to our creditors:

1) There are two houses for sale, one on either side of our property, which are significantly bigger and in better repair than ours. Both houses have been on the market now for over 18 months and are currently marketed at valuation price on a fixed price basis.
2) If our offer is unsuccessful, it would mean a move out of this small rural community. Our son has Autism Spectrum Disorder and is rather disabled by this. He attends a small country school where he has grown up with his peers who very much accept him. Change to routine and environment would be extremely distressing to him and would have a significant impact on his mental health. Moving from this small community would also increase his risk of being bullied. We receive high rate Disability Living Allowance to care for our son as a result of his difficulties.

We very much hope that we can find a way to stay in our family home. We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely xxxxx

I received a rather prompt phonecall from TD Admin asking further questions like who pays mortgage and confirming we still live separately. I continue to pay the mortgage and ex husband pays nothing towards it although we still have an amicable arrangement. I received the following email from TD Admin today:
Hi ***

I have spoken to my manager because your cases are quite complicated.

He is of the opinion that we do not deal with your property. Because you are unable to maintain a contribution it is most likely that the Trustee will resign from both your cases. We are currently keeping your cases open while we investigate potential PPI claims. Once these have been finalised it is my intention to ask the Trustee to resign from your case. This will then pass you back to your creditors. You would then need to look at other options available to you.

If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards
*
On the one hand I am relieved for the moment not to need to ask my parents for this big sum of money but also extremely disgruntled with the TD company. They knew by the end of 2009 that both myself and my ex husband could no longer contribute to our trust deeds following our change in circumstances. They have let this grumble on and we have received only a few letters from them in this time which basically say that they will keep extending our TDs. It will be 3 years this July since we signed our TD agreements and to have to go through sequestration and start another process lasting several years seems unfair. Of course it will have to happen and we will take responsibility for this, however, this could and should have been initiated by the end of 2009 and we wouldn't have wasted so much time. I would be very interested to hear what the experts here feel about this situation and whether I would have grounds to complain about the practices of this particular TD company and who I should complain to? Thanks for reading.