Welcome to the forum John.

Were the PPI claims that you mention started on your own initiative or on the instruction of your trust deed company?

I got a cold call in August 2010 a year after my contractural completion date of the trust deed, from a solisitor who discussed the issue with myself and claiming back PPI, I sent him a letter of comfort I recieved from AFS/Cleardebt which says I had met all my contrabutions and that the paperwork for discharge was being dealt with after the initial agreement for discharge was broken, they were happy to move forward with my PPI claims at that time (yes I initiated privately and spoke to AFS at the end of August to which they have requested all funds that are claimed, and that they would not claim the funds on my behalf but take the money??)

I'm interested to hear what our experts have to say on this. I think your Trustee may consider that they have a legal obligation to collect the money for the benefit of your creditors.

Were the accounts you claimed on included in your trust deed?

I do agree that it's very unfair that your discharge has been held up for reasons that were outside of your control.

The PPI claims are all in the trust deed bar 1 and that is the one they have started chasing me for the money, the rest of them i have stopped until I find out about breach of contract by AFS, i.e. 1 Not giving me my discharge as agreed in Jan 2010, 2 Counter signing docs on behalf of the trustee 3 months after he resigned from the company, 3 Not informing myself or others of the administration of the company etc etc, I see from previous posts you actualy gave someone the new number for AFS, all in all I upheld my terms and conditions and it looks as though they have not done there job properly (Duty of care) springs to mind as they are in fact working for me ???? All i want is to be able to contact somebody and have a descission made on my discharge, that is all i have wanted from day dot. Do they not have to uphold any agreements from AFS that were made prior to taking over the company, i.e. Duty to honuor previous agreements as they never stopped trading?????

There is also another issue that may have a bearing on this that a lot of people do not know about,
I recently came across a lawyer in Liverpool (John Pugh) who says on his web site that if you where miss sold PPI and you had debts etc because of it, there may be a case of clearing the whole debt due to the miss selling if it was taken out before a certain date range.
I sent this information to AFS/Cleardebt and asked them to look in to this a little further to see if it was correct and if so would it apply to 95% of the debt owed in my trust deed (again duty of care working for me etc etc they refused, I thought they would have to look at all avenues of reduction etc
In the web page it says (If the single premium PPI is made a condition of the loan and is included in the agreement as a credit as opposed to cost of credit, that breaches the prescribed term as to statement of amount of credit and can make pre 6th April 2007 agreements irredeemebly unenforseable), as all of my debt was pre 2007 should this be taken in to consideration with Trust deeds????

Hi again John.

I think that there are a number of very different issues here that do not necessarily have significant relevance to each other in terms of sorting out your current situation:

Discharge from your trust deed. It's clear that you have every right to expect that your trust deed would/should have been closed soon after you completed your payments. You have done everything that you were expected to do and therefore it seems very unfair that you have experienced this delay.
There were legal complications following the transfer of cases between the companies you mentioned which have led to many delays for the clients involved; some of whom have written about their experience here.
If you are minded to make a complaint about the fact that your case should now be closed it will need to go to your current Trustee personally in the first instance, and his/her professional body if you are not satisfied by the response from your Trustee.

The PPI claim that has paid out. If you have not been discharged yet from the trust deed I believe that your Trustee will consider that they are legally obliged to collect that for the benefit of your creditors. One of the experts will clarify whether there is any discretion that can be applied to this, but I can understand the position of your Trustee on this.

The other PPI claims. I think there is a moral question on these claims. You mention that they are all for accounts that were included in the trust deed, and that the PPI was paid upfront on all of these accounts. You therefore seem to be seeking to reclaim money that you may not have paid in the first instance (as some or all of it has likely been written off as part of your trust deed).
That leads to a practical problem. I think if the above is the case the companies involved will go to significant lengths not to pay anything to you, even if a claim is judged in your favour and your trust deed is completed. This should be a concern for you as, if you win the claim but the lender withholds payment, the company handling your claims for you are likely still to seek their percentage of the claim "victory" from you. This isn't an academic point; on another forum that I read regularly this is happening and causing big problems for the people receiving the bills from the claims companies without the expected accompanying claim payment.
Anyone reading this forum who has finished their trust deed and is considering starting PPI claims should be very careful as such claims could potentially leave them worse off.

Your Trustee and trust deed company were not just working for you. They were working for your creditors as well. They are therefore unlikely to seek to prove that a debt was unenforceable where it is believed that the money was lent and borrowed in good faith.
If a trust deed company were to seek to have all of their clients balances to be deemed "unenforceable" legally they could hardly expect creditors to agree to allow the trust deeds that they propose in the future to become protected.
In fact one trust deed company was following this process (seeking to deem some credit contracts unenforceable)which led to an angry response on this forum from clients who themselves experienced delays in the closure of their trust deeds as a result of the ongoing claims.

Unenforceable credit contracts in general. Even had you gone down this path you may well not have been successful. Millions of pounds have been lost by consumers who were promised by companies that their credit contracts could be deemed unenforceable, who paid big upfront fees for the service, and then nothing of the sort happened. There have been cases that have gone either way when they have got to Court. This is in no way a comment on the specific statement made by the solicitor that you refer to; just a general warning to other readers about the promises made by some claims companies trading in this area and the potential pitfalls.

Some excellent points raised by trust deed assistant there I think - and certainly summarised better than I could have done.

Certainly, you have been very unfortunate that your discharge from your trust deed has been delayed due to the issues with AFS and you have my sympathies.

The issue of the PPI reclaim that your trustee is seeking from you is a complicated one. I do feel that for the trustee to try to claim funds from you that should have been paid to you well after the date of discharge, had it not been delayed through no fault of your own, seems wrong. However, whether they are within their rights to do it is another matter I'm afraid (though it may be arguable and you may wish to check the exact wording of your trust deed in respect of "acquirenda"). On the other hand, if it is money for PPI which was paid for by credit which is included in the trust deed, then it would seem fair that they should expect the funds from any reclaim to be paid in towards your trust deed.

I do understand where you guys are coming from but there seems to be something that is getting over looked, I signed a 3 year trust deed with PB recovery, signed and countered signed by trustee and member of staff, and in this meeting I was told that directly after my final payment it would take up to 6 weeks for my discharge, AFS bought that from them under those terms that where agreed, and I have a letter that states it was a 3 year trust deed from AFS mid term, and again AFS agreed mid Jan for discharge as per a discussion in Aug/Oct 2009, I also have a letter of comfort from Jan when I spoke to an advisor from AFS/Cleardebt in which the conversation revolved around, would i be held accountable for any more monies that may come to me either by a win fall etc etc, to which I was told no as it was only a clerical matter and I had nothing to worry about (the same letter that is counter signed by an AFS/Cleardebt member of staff on behalf of the previous trustee who had quit the company 3 months previously) how can they sign on behalf of someone who does not work for the organisation??, I also asked in the same conversation should I get a lawyer involved and I was told no again as it was a clerical issue, As i stated before I have contacted the ACCA and the AIB and also the Financial Obman, The ACCA Have started there complaint procedure, The AIB are auditing the accounts and the FO have started there investigation, but as everyone knows this can take 6 months, If you read between the lines, How can a company go in to administration on the 24th of Nov 2009 and by the 3rd of December be sold to another company which is approx 7 day turn round without having the accounts/paperwork appropriately checked by the administrator ????, How can the trustee quit the company and no one tell the relevant people who they work for me etc, How can they not tell anyone for months until they are contacted by myself etc???
How can they break agreements that where made in 2006 and confirmed in 2009 and then again in 2010 and finally, I will get of my soap box,does anybody know the name and address of who would sign of my discharge, i.e. court, sherrif etc etc so I can contact them with this info to by pass AFS/Cleardebt, someone out there must know ?????
ps As for legal complications, they should not affect individuals, that is a matter for the company to sort out, and they should have probably informed people in a timely manner and asked for an extension of time to be agreed by all parties????

Hi jcod,

I don't think that anything is being overlooked in the comments made on this thread; as previously stated it seems extremely unfair that your discharge has been held up when you have met all of the original commitments that you made.

It also seems very unfair if assurances made to you subsequently have not been kept.

I'm afraid that I am not aware of any way to bypass your Trustee to get your trust deed closed. If any of the experts know there to be a process to do this I'm sure they'll add it here.
Otherwise I do hope that the complaints that you have lodged contribute to getting these matters sorted out for you as soon as possible.

Thanks for your support, but would you say that unfair is probably the wrong word as contractural and verbal agreements where broken, if I broke the contractural agreement, to say stop paying as I had agreed then there would have been hell to pay ???? and I am sure there are people out there who have felt the wrath of the trustee etc etc, I am bemused to the point that if it is supposed to be binding both ways, me and the company, how come they have extended the terms and conditions past the 3 year date without my / debtors knowledge as I did not agree or sign any extra paperwork ???, a contract is a contract signed by both parties, all be it in 2006, As for by passing the trustee, in my contract / trust deed it says on the lines of that if terms cannot be met it has to be decided upon by the court????, does this mean they will have to take me to court because we cannot find common ground???, or do you think they will just keep sending me threatening letters, there is also something else stated in the legislation that a interim trustee could be appointed???? someone in the legal profession reading this should be thinking, NO WIN, NO FEE????
I ask you this and your colleagues, for an honest answer, you are the company, you do what has happened through the thread above, broke agreements, contractual ties, duty of care etc etc, would you expect to be taken to court ?????? please submit your answers on a post card Hee Hee

There's not much more I can add to my previous post jcod. Nobody here is defending in any way the delays and other problems that you have experienced.

A Trustee is in a uniquely powerful position when a client signs a trust deed. I feel that this position of power should be accompanied by the equal exercise of fairness and responsibility. It generally is. However it's apparent that this is not the case for every Trustee at every trust deed company.

They are however responsible for their conduct to their regulators. You have mentioned that you have raised this matter with the relevant regulators and I do hope that they quickly correct any mistreatment that you are enduring.

Thanks for your answer, I put this to you how can the trustee be in such a powerful possition when the contract has ran out???????????

It just isn't a contract in that way jcod.

Your Trustee can be held responsible by his or her regulators if they do not perform in accordance with the laws, rules and guidance that they are subject to.

I am sorry but a contract is a contract it binds parties within the constraints of legislation etc etc etc, So what you are saying is that the trustee is above the LAW????, as I am out of contract then this company can be held responsable / accountable for monies, such as the PPI claims?????? this could get mighty intresting, do you think that i should also contact all parties and tell tham that AFS is withholding a rather large Kittie of which AFS get a large slice off and that it should have been paid to them over a year ago and that the PPI claims I may recieve from them can be held accountable to be re claimed from AFS, as AFS will not claim the monies as discussed and confirmed in a letter from the compamies involved??????