Welcome to the forum robmak72.

I'm glad to hear that you may be in a position to complete your trust deed early.

There may be a misunderstanding about joint debt. It's not split when you go into a trust deed, meaning that you each technically owe the full amount on any joint debts. This is known as joint and several liability.

That means, if you have received a lump sum, it will be used to repay the full amount owed on any joint accounts. I'm not sure whether that will mean the amount that you need to repay will be more than you currently expect?

The potential benefit here is that, if you repay the full joint debts, those debts will no longer be a creditor in your wife's trust deed. In some circumstances this might mean she could finish her trust deed early as well.

If it is just you that has become entitled to a lump sum, then you will not be compelled to pay off your wife's debts. It would just be your debts and any joint debts which feature in your trust deed. Your wife can remain in a trust deed.

You should ask your trustee for an estimate of how much this will cost. It will be your full debt level, your trustee's fees, and some interest on the debts (minus any contributions that you have already made). We can't really provide any useful estimate on that.

Thanks for you reply. The income is potentialy from an upcoming redundancy. Myself and my wife sat and did the maths of what we would be able to pay with redundancy and it looked ( to us) that we would be shy £8k of the original debt. So we had our original debt figure then detucted all payments made and had a balance of £8k. We called trust deed up and low and sodiing behold they have added fees of £17k- £10k added to my one as I had more assets and £7k to my wife deby so we would nedd to find £25k to be clear....I wish

So I asked how much would we owe and what our payments would be after payment and they said we would still continue paying the same in trust deed to completion, So say if I got a job the day after I am made redundant would I have to continue to pay same amount for next 3-4 years, I feel am stick either way..I am maybe best not waiting for payout and just looking for another job now and not serving my notice period to work

Advice please?

Ps would it cost me to contact initial creditiors and anyway of getting out of deed without getting stung! Just want a fresh start!

Hi robmak72.

I'm afraid that the advice you received appears to be correct.

If made redundant you should keep the statutory element of the payment. This is the amount that your employer must pay you by law. This should help to buy you some time to find new work.

Anything extra would be paid into your trust deed.

You would then continue to make payments into your trust deed, based upon an assessment of what you can reasonably afford. The amount may change given that you'll be in a different job with potentially different pay.

All parties to the trust deed (you, your creditors, the trustee) are bound by it, so it will not be possible to approach your creditors directly.