Income and Expendture form

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Hi

It has been pointed out on this site not to fill in the income and expenditure forms sent via solicitors, in certain cases to use the CABs forms to avoid giving unneccessary information.

As an unemployed mother of 3, with rented property and no assets, when would you advise sending this document, as surely it would make the solicitors think carefully about dragging out this case.

Thanks for a useful site

Marne

-- marne small (marnesmall@aol.com), May 07, 2002

Answers

This is a very good question.

Sending in an income and expenditure form makes it drag on regardless of your position because it encourages lenders to ask you for a certain amount per week or per month. That amount may well be, say, £5 for people in your position.

But... each year they will "review" it. Which means they ask you to fill in another income and expenditure form with a view to increasing it as soon as possible. I also know of some cases where lenders simply demanded more after a period of time regardless of whether the repossessee was earning more money or had acquired assets.

In terms of whether sending in an income and expenditure form makes any difference to whether you get sued or not... Regardless of what you tell them, they will have you watched carefully with a view to finding out what you earn, who you work for and what you own in order to decide whether or not it is worth trying to take you to court.

You - and possibly your relatives - can also expect funny phone calls from the "Inland Revenue" to find out your details in order to send you a "rebate".

In summary: the decision to stop hassling you is not dependent on whether you fill in an income and expenditure form or not. It is dependent on the costs versus the benefits of continuing to hassle you.

The decision to sue you is also not dependent on whether you fill in an income and expenditure form or not. It is dependent on the lender's independent assessment of the costs versus the benefits of suing you.

Lee

-- Lee (repossession@bigfoot.com), May 07, 2002.


Although I agree with Lee's comments in general, it still does appear from what others who have successfully settled with lenders say, that it is necessary to give some income details in order to achieve a deal.

Obviously people have different circumstances and yours appear from what you say to be fairly strained. What you do need to avoid though is the sort of open ended arrangement where you drip feed money to them for years.

If you read the answers posted recently on the subject of making offers and settling you will perhaps be encouraged to try to close this claim down by negotiating a 5-10% lump sum full and final settlement as others seem to have done.

This will probably depend on whether or not you are able to borrow this sort of money and how keen you are to clear things up. You don't say if you have gone through the various stages of putting the lender to strict proof of claim or not. If you start making things less easy for them by taking them to task then perhaps they will be more likely to back off given your low income.

If you have aspirations for a better future, it would probably be sensible to try to settle their claim while you are in relatively impoverished circumstances.

I'm not sure if you need to be completely candid about your expenditure however. They can work out for themselves that someone on benefits with three kids is not spending money on non essentials, can't they?

Perhaps a simple statement of your circumstances in terms of unemployed/ benefits / three children / no assets together with an offer to settle for £x (assuming you can access the money from friends or family perhaps)will put you in a favourable position.

-- Gordon Bennet (arsenewhinger@hotmail.com), May 08, 2002.


Although I found this site very helpfull I ignored the advice on completing the Income & Expenditure Forms. For someone who has no assets and very little income I felt it was best to sort the problem out quickly so that my friend (whom I wa helping) could get on with rebuilding their lives. We completed the I&E form and made an offer of £1k(which was loaned from a relative) instead of £12.5k and the Building Society accepted. As your finances are probably as bad as they can get now would probably be the best time to agree a full and final settlement if you can. Good Luck

-- (von6@uboot.com), June 10, 2002.

I have no assets, debts and four kids. Eleven years on I am still being harassed.

-- Too scared to say (iwasduped@yahoo.com), June 10, 2002.

I would suggest that we take vonboots comments with a large pinch of salt as I smell a rat here! Isn't it a bit odd that someone supposedly posting a comment about a reason to complete an I & E form has tracked back in the postings and added the same advice to similar threads over the past weeks or months?

I think Lee probably talked the most sense on this subject. Completing an I&E is acknowledgement of the debt as I understand the law.

Maybe some people have found a way out of the shortfall claim nightmare by going down this route, but there seems to be plenty that have been faced with increased attempts by debt collectors to cash in.

-- Gordon Bennet (arsenewhinger@hotmail.com), June 11, 2002.



I also spotted the back-tracking in other similar postings Gordon - I echo your comments completely.

-- Stephen (stephen.pooley@ntlworld.com), June 11, 2002.

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