Debt Questions

I have been reading for a long time but first post.Got a date for end of March and I'm getting stuck with a few parts of the form.

I am a full time carer for my disabled wife and we have two kids.(one is autistic)

I have contacted cccs and been advised to go bankrupt. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get through to them to get some help and advice on filling in the forms.


So thought I'd ask for some help please.

Income and expenditure.
1)I only get Carers Allowance as my income.
All the other income is paid to my wife. Income support,DLA,Severe Disablement,Child Benefit,Housing and Council Tax benefit.
For my income I have put down just my carers allowance.
£403.00 a month
Is this ok?

2)I have listed just the the main household costs which I mostly contribute 1/2 of and my own bills.
My contribution to outgoings is £364.00 (leaving £9.00 surplus)
I have then put the total outgoings down with my wifes contribution making up the rest.
My wife has some money left after this which she uses to pay her bills, mobility car,kids pocket money etc.
Does this sound correct or should I be telling them about how all the families income is spent. As there would be some left for an IPO if I needed to do that (I think?) but this would be from her DLA.

Thanks for any advice.

i would include everything just to be on the safe side, or they MAY think you're trying to hide your household income for some reason and it may eb delayed?? now this is only my opinion, im sure someone will correct me if im wrong

as long as you show you full household income and full expenditure then you should be fine and answering your question about your wifes DLA, i wouldnt of thought they would take this into account when looking at your available surplus??

again, if im wrong someone will correct me but hope this helps i went through this myself, but only had myself to include on the income and expenditure, but i think being completly upfront about your finances is only a good thing in this situation, it will save any delays in your application.

hope this helps and good luck

They will not use her DLA to pay an IPA on your debts.

Be honest and put down everything that is paid - but remember your wife's DLA is hers.

How do you pay half the household expenses on carers allowance alone? The OR might question that but it is your debt, your bankruptcy petition and your wife should not be subsidizing it. However, you should not be subsdizingt household expenditure.

I would put everything down and then query any IPA!!! They do have to consider any query.

Thanks for the replies.
Until recently I had been dealing with all the finances and been trying to hide the fact that i was paying out £700++ a month to creditors and she has been supporting us financially for years.
She had problems with her finances and went BR 5years ago.So I didn't want to worry her.

It wasn't until we had to look for a new place to live that my wife started asking questions and I came clean.The costs with the new place are alot more so needed to sort it out.I only made this list to send to creditors with token payments whilst getting things sorted.


When sorting i&e this is what I listed. Any feedback greatly appreciated.

Income
£403.00 carers allowance

My outgoings.

Water £17 (half)
Gas/Electric £66 (half)
TV Licence £6 (half)
Mobile £35.00
Life Insurance £10.00
Food/household £200.00
Optican/Dentist £10.00
Clothing/footwear £20.00
emergencies £20.00
total £384
surplus £19.00

My wife paying for everything else.

I am happy to list the whole families outgoings. Would that include my wifes bills.eg catalogue and mobile?

Thanks for all the help.

well in my experience if you claim income support as a couple (which is what you do, even if it's in your wife's name) the OR isnt going to be looking for payments from you anyway, so it could be argues that whether you list just your own, or both your incomes is immaterial.

however, i would suggest that you give the OR the complete picture of the income for your household.

so if you include your wifes income details as well, then yes you list ALL her expenditure as well. if you list her DLA (and you should, even if its disregarded) you can offset it with an expenditure for 'disability costs expenditure' to the equal amount

you could also make a statement on the back pages to the tune of 'my wife has been bankrupt in the past and does not want to financially contribute to the repayments to my debt"

i'm presuming that when you were paying £700 monthly to your debts you weren't claiming income support then? otherwise i struggle to see how you could have done it

your carers allowance is almost certainly paid weekly or 4 weekly, dont confuse that with monthly, as its a different amount. if you havent done already, you should convert it to a monthly amount, if youre listing monthly expenditure costs. to do that you multiply your weekly amount by 52 then divide by 12

Thanks for the advice.

I started paying debt when working and continued once we were on benefits which included income support.It's the amount i've been paying thats crept up as the interest rates and minimum repayments jumped which is why it got so bad.

I wasn't sure if I should mention my wifes past BR or not.But sounds a sensible explination.

I hadn't thought of listing disability expenses as an offset to her DLA.That makes more sense than not including all the family income in full. Just hard to explain exactly were it all goes when it's all little things that cost more.

Thanks again