Welcome to the trust deed forum jellytot75.

It's clearly very important that you're able to see the income and expenditure information that's being used to calculate your monthly payment. I can't think of any reasonable basis for a trustee to refuse to let you see it.

I'd also imagine that under GDPR you have every right to see it as it's personal information about you that the firm holds. You might want to submit a "subject access request" under GDPR demanding that this information is provided.

Only once you see this financial statement can you really determine whether the request for an additional payment is reasonable or not.

It's not the case necessarily that any extra income will result in an increase in your payment. Bills and expenses also tend to increase over time (especially at the moment) which can offset some increases in income. These two things should work together.

It is the case that any extra "disposable income" would need to be paid into a trust deed. So if your regular trust deed payment is based upon an income of £2,000 per month, and you received an extra £200 overtime one month, your trustee would quite rightly request that the extra money be handed over to repay more of what's owed to the creditors.

If you want to escalate any complaint you can raise the matter with the Accountant in Bankruptcy (they oversee the trust deed process in Scotland) and/or the regulatory professional body of which your trustee is a member.

Settling a trust deed (bringing it to an early end) can be very costly. This can only happen if you repay (including any payments you've already made) the total of:
1 - The full amount owed at the start of the trust deed.
2 - Interest on those debts.
3 - Your trustee's fees

Hi there

Thanks for your reply , I have asked the trustee to send me us a copy of the figures and we don’t have a time scale of this as they never reply or if you phone then you get passed from one person to another and frequently get cut off. I have therefore submitted a formal complaint and received a response that it will take 8 weeks to have them look at it.

One thing when they done the online banking review their figures came back that we had £1700 coming in each month for 3 of us and £1760 going out which showed we had more going out than coming in and this is all
The bills and food, fuel, clothing everything on the expenditure figures are all
Paid from the account for them to see and this is with my husband doing overtime . If he didn’t do any overtime we wouldn’t have much to live on .
Every review we used to submit all the bank statements , wage slips and any receipts and also we filled in the expenditure figures and they were all accepted by the other trustee since may 2019 so not sure what is going on here for some reason this new trustee is not willing to let us fill in any expenditure or see their figures and keep bombarding my husband with threatening you have 14 days to pay up when we don’t have any spare cash ,

One thing do we have a day who our trustee is ? We were with same trustee from the start and then in January got a email to say this new one is taking over , not even a explanation or nothing .

So the income/expenditure budget they are using to work out the monthly payment is based on your husband's basic wage and they are therefore seeking anything he has earned over and above that to be paid over on top, is that right? If so, and if the resulting monthly payment is not affordable based, then the expenditure budget that they are using is presumably unrealistic/out of date.

As TDA advised, they have to provide you with a copy of how they are working out your monthly payments, so you should insist on seeing that then go through the expenditure budget closely and make any amendments required to bring the figures up to the correct amount, or a realistic amount. It isn't justifiable for them to use out of date figures if you are saying they are no longer correct.

Rather than being based on basic pay, the income figure should be calculated as an average of what your husband actually earned over the period, set against the realistic living costs.

Hi there thanks for your reply also.

Yes that’s exactly what they are doing, when we speak to
Them all we are getting is his basic wage is £310 and anything he earns over that will need to be paid back , within the next 14 days , he said from end of November he had earned £2400 extra and that’s not the final figure. He’s not had any chance to do his expenditure or anything and we haven’t seen any figures from
Then it’s just basically their figures are it and we can’t do anything

He’s just had two text right there saying we need to phone them ASAP as his trust deed is in arrears despite him making every payment . They just aren’t willing to listen to anything it’s like bullying tactics going on here.

Sorry to be repetitive , I had to call them there after my husband received those two texts , they are saying that was by mistake and to ignore them and my complaint has been escalated , it’s all fine then saying that but this is people’s lives and money they are dealing with .

So basically review has been done in yearly figures and they aren’t giving us a chance to fill in any expenditure and we have to just accept it . I really didn’t think they were alllowed to act like this, that’s what I came here for a bit of advice and really appreciate the feedback you have given us.

I will keep sticking to the facts I want it in writing and I feel we should be able to fill in our expenditure and if not I think we will need to go to aib as a last resort .

Hi we are still not any forward , still waiting on our complaint being resolved and told another 6 weeks wait , however my husband is now getting bombarded with texts, calls , emails and now letters saying he is seriously in arrears with his monthly payments which he has never missed . When I call I am getting told it’s a mistake but why are we getting them every day .

Wondering wether it’s best I just go to the aib with my complaint rather than have this hassle for another 6 weeks , I just can’t get my head round a trustee would carry on so unprofessional.

good luck with this.
I am at the end of four years and in the middle of the term my trust deed was switched to a new company with a very different attitude and approach to the selling company.

I wont pass judgment straight away, will do a comprehensive update at some point, and see how it pans out in the weeks ahead - but I wish it hadn't changed hands ... huge stress that's had a serious affect on us . I'm really surprised that selling on TD's onto other companies as commodities is so common.
A level of profit is essential no doubt, but vulnerable people, mixed with the buying & selling of their business seems a recipe for disaster.

Good luck , and hopefully a human being takes a good look at your case and they stop auto texting you!

Hi HELP_Stressed,

I can fully understand that a transfer of your trust deed would be worrying and stressful.

There are a number of reasons why this can happen including a trustee becoming unwell, retiring, or a firm becoming stretched financially. In fact trustees are required to have transfer plans in place to ensure continuity of service to customers (in the event that it would otherwise be jeopardised).

I hope everything turns out fine for you. Your new trustee will still be subject to the same rules and regulatory scrutiny as the last one.

Hi jellytot75,

This does sound like systems overriding what should be happening, as per the comments you've received when you have called the firm.

While any complaint processes you have activated run through their timeline, I'd suggest that you keep notes of the contact you're receiving and the comments that have been made to you when you've spoken to someone at the firm.

Hi there

Thanks for your both replies , help-dressed so we can’t be the only ones being put through this horrible experience , it’s causing my partner sleepless nights and getting communications most days with time limits on them, I had to email 2 further emails to ask them to stop , but it’s not also this trustee is worse than the creditors , also you get cut off all the time while on the phone , waiting time to speak to someone is about 2 hours then you get cut off so frustrating .

Yeah looks like these automated communications are being sent out by the system and it needs staff to put a stop to it. All we can do is wait another 5’weeks on them coming back to us.