failed iva

[gerrumonside]

in 2002 i failed to keep up payments on an IVA i had been paying every month for about 18 months, can i restart the arrangement or do i need to pay the full amount back,i am in a position to pay it all back when i sell my house next year

[themas]

Need more info. What has happened since the failure in 2002? Have you made any payments? If so, were these through the IVA or direct to creditors? What action did the IP take when your payments failed?

It seems unlikely to me that the IVA still exists if you have made no payments for 4 years. If it was stopped, the creditors have almost certainly been adding interest etc. to your debts (which would have been frozen during the IVA). If you don't have the figures, you will need to get accurate current amount for each debt before you attempt to pay them off.

If the IVA does not exist it is probably best for you to arrange payments in full direct to the creditors (assuming you will have enough money for this) rather than setting up another IVA - which would involve paying fees to the IP.

[gerrumonside]

i havent made any payments at all , ive had a few debt collecting agencies contact me and ive paid off some of the smaller debts but none of the bigger debts i owed have been in touch, i have moved around a bit and tried to ignore it but i need to sort it out as i want to emigrate to the usa, i dont know where to start about contacting the companies i owed money to i cant remember half of them, i owed about 18000 in total when i entered into the iva

[themas]

Presumably you don't have any paperwork. The IVA papers would have listed all the debts so you could try contacting the IP who dealt with it & see if they still have them. Alternatively, get your credit ref. agency files which should show entries for all the debts. Also, you can find out whether there are any CCJs either from the CRA files or by application to the Register of CCJs (google).

Be warned that going to CRA may well lead to your old addresses being linked to your present one, followed by approaches from the creditors.

[gerrumonside]

many thanks for your information it has been very useful,i know im opening a big can of worms but i need to get this sorted once and for all , i have a lot of equity in my house so once it is sold i want to pay all my debts off, do you think the credit companies will have been adding interest on over the years or do you think i will be able to pay back the original ammount if i offer to pay it all in one go

[themas]

Its up to the creditors what they do once an IVA fails, but it would be quite normal for them to add on interest and other charges (including what accrued during the IVA period). However, after a time some of them will probably have passed the debt to a debt collection agency to try and collect on their behalf, or have sold it to a third party. It is quite common (but not necessarily the case) that, when either of these things happen, interest and charges stop being added. If you get asked for an amount which you think is unreasonably high in relation to what the debt was originally, you could ask for a detailed breakdown - but many firms seem reluctant to provide this.

You could try for full and final settlement offers and some of the creditors may accept. It would depend in part on what information you were able to give them about the source of the money you now have available - eg if someone was being helped by family up to a certain amount and was able to say that this was the maximum available it might be more acceptable to a creditor than a simple statement that you now have the money to settle.

[gerrumonside]

Thanks again , ive applied for a list of ccj`s against me it cost me �8.00 which wasn`t too bad and i will see where i go from here, im desperate to get it sorted once and for all ,will my credit be back to normal once everything is paid off

[themas]

The defaults will remain on CRA files for 6 years. Any that you pay off in full should be noted as satisfied. If you make "full and final" offers of less than the full amount and they are accepted the creditor may do something different - such as noting the record "satisfied in part".

Either way, you are likely to continue with credit problems for a long while.