Welcome to the forum mrssmith.

As you're aware, fees are charged by the companies that handle trust deeds. You agree to those fees when you appoint the trustee.

Normally they'll be taken from your contributions, as the advisor informed you at the start. While it is you paying the fees, some people might view this really as being at the cost of the creditors as it's money that might otherwise have gone to them.

The issue here is that a trust deed only repays the debts that you cannot afford to repay. If your husband has won a large settlement then his creditors might become eligible to be repaid in full, to receive some interest, and for him to cover the fees of the trust deed provider rather than then be deducted from contributions. This is because he appears to be in a position to pay this now.

Your situation appears to be separate. You haven't come into a sum of money, so you may still need to make arrangements with your trustee about what happens next.

Ok I do understand this and I am no complaining about paying full debts off as this would be only fair those admin fees are £5500 each forgive me for being naive but this is just incredible how is this helping people to get out of debt ? that is £275 a month from start to end in fees which I was not aware of.

Hi mrssmith.

I can certainly appreciate that these figures seem high. The trustee will need to be able to justify them in terms of the hours of work actually done and their hourly rates if you want to check into it.

The fees will have been listed on the paperwork that you signed at the start I'd have thought. You may have missed them at the time.

Hi mrssmith,

When you entered your Trust Deed, did you have a breakdown of what debt you had in your sole name, what was in your husband's sole name and what was in joint names?

A Trust Deed is an individual arrangement which is why it's one Trust Deed per person and not a ÔÇ£jointÔÇØ Trust Deed. Where two people sign a Trust Deed and have joint debt and the joint debt can be repaid in full then it should only be paid once and not twice from both Trust Deeds.

Any money that your husband receives from the employment tribunal would only be paid towards his Trust Deed and his debts unless by doing this it cleared off all of his debts in full + interest + the Trustees costs. Any money he has left over after doing this could then be used to pay towards your Trust Deed if you husband wanted to. Or in the situation that all of the debt you both have is joint then via his Trust Deed all the debts will be repaid + interest.

Do you have any idea of what level of compensation could be paid to your husband?

Fees in a Trust Deed can seem expensive but generally speaking they fall in line with the same level of fee which an accountant, solicitor, surveyor or other professional may charge. Nowadays fees are set by the creditors and they come from the overall pot that a client pay's into. You can look at it both ways I guess in that the client pay's the fee from their payment and the creditors allow some of the money to be taken by the Trustee. Normally a client will be writing off a large proportion of debts so won't pay too much attention to the fees but in the scenario whereby debts can be repaid in full + interest then it can cost the client more money.

As TDA has advised the Trustee needs to justify the fee which they charge. You should receive a copy of their fee statement on an annual basis and this will tell you about the process of objecting to these should you wish.

Joint debts should never have to be paid twice, mrssmith. If both Trust Deeds were being paid off in full then the joint debts should be split between the two. The creditors in question cannot get paid twice what they are owed.