Hi Alasdair, welcome to the forum.

You should never be asked to pay more than you can reasonably afford, so the reduction in your household income should have meant a reduction in your Trust Deed contributions too if they were no longer affordable.

There are a couple of "buts" here though. Firstly, any such changes should be notified to your Trustee as soon as they happen, so that any reduction can be agreed at the time. Your trustee may take the position that as you have managed to maintain the original payments throughout then it stands to reason that they are actually affordable.

Secondly, even if your trustee accepts that the original contributions are no longer affordable and agrees to reduce them, they may decide that the difference will need to made up by extending the term of your Trust Deed to collect the difference by extra payments. This shouldn't normally be necessary in circumstances which are out of your control (eg loss of job, sickness etc), but they may not see having a baby as falling into that category.

There is no fixed timescale in which they have to deal with these reviews, but it isn't really reasonable to keep someone waiting for long if they are saying that the repayments are no longer affordable. As such, you should feel perfectly within your rights to keep on their back until you get an answer or complain further if it takes much longer.

Thanks for the quick reply, the main reason the payment have remained affordable is simply that some of the shared expenditure has been fully met by my partner (coming out her savings, credit) rather than it being shared household expenditure based on income.

When there is an expectation that my trust deed payments are based on household income and expenditure surely if my partners income reduced and our combined expenditure increased then this should be considered?

Alasdair

Yes I agree with your comments however as Kevin said, the trustee has to balance what is best for creditors.

If the situation arises out with your control then they may take this into account however the trust deed needs to provide a return to creditors.

P

Totally understand but the affordability must be key, creditors are better getting payments than none at all. And potentially other organisations I.e council tax and utility payments might not be met to ensure trust deed payments are.

Hi Alasdair1980.

You are correct in respect that your payment should be based upon an affordability calculation that prioritises important bills like housing, utilities, and council tax.

Assuming your partner isn't also in a trust deed, your payment should be based upon you paying a fair share of joint bills and expenses, plus your personal expenses.

The follow-up question is what happens if your payment does reduce? Depending upon the circumstances, your trustee might conclude that it's fair to extend your arrangement so that the amount initially pledged to creditors is still paid into your trust deed in the end.

Update ** Despite me chasing several times I've still had no update from my Trustee, I have now found myself furloughed and have a 20% reduction in salary.

Overall this delay has had a significant impact on household income and with more impact ahead.

Any advice?

Hi Alasdair1980.

With all of these changes it seems very likely that a change to your monthly payment will be appropropriate and necessary.

In the circumstances we can only really suggest that you continue to follow-up with your trustee's office until they being to make some progress looking into this.

Thanks for the comments, my trustee has been in touch to confirm my payments will reduce based on my current circumstances.

That's good news, Alasdair. Hopefully not with the term of your Trust Deed being extended as a consequence?

No thankfully not, however I’m not particularly happy with the fact it took them three months to do this which resulted in me falling behind with council tax and utilities payments. Somehow I’ll need to now resolve those issues

Hi Alasdair1980.

How far have you fallen behing on these priority payments?

A few months on both, utility less of an issue as easy to set up payment plan but not sure of what approach the council will take.

They should really backdate any reduction to the point that you brought your change of circumstances to their attention. Have they not done this?

They haven’t no, should I challenge this?