Financial News & Information.

25 per cent of the UK adult population are saying their financially out of control with a major number, around one million three hundred thousand people, admitting their finances are entirely unmanageable, a report by the insurer AXA says.

AXA reported that mounting credit card bills are now putting just close to 3.8 million people under intense financial pressure and a further one million of UK borrowers are now struggling to keep up their repayments.

500,000 people have been threatened with the bailiffs or repossession and consumer county court judgements (CCJs) has reached their highest level since the start of 2007’s third quarter.

The public interest Company that manages the register of judgements on behalf of the Lord Chancellor has reported that within England and Wales County Court Judgements rose by 17.4 per cent year on year to 223,519, its highest level since the beginning of 2007 and from the second quarter of 2008 this is a 25 per cent increase.

Individual insolvencies in England and Wales increased to 27,087 in the third quarter of 2008, up 8.8 per cent from 24,893 in the previous quarter.

Bankruptcies and Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) have increased 12 and 3 percent respectively.

The credit crunch could be blamed for the increase in corporate and personal insolvency throughout 2008, however, its patently obvious that further failures are going to be compounded by the recession throughout 2009.

Unfortunately the planned Simplified Individual Voluntary Arrangement SIVA, due out next year has been abandoned by the Insolvency Service

For consumers with debts up to 75,000 a SIVA, being the simplified IVA and would have only required that a simple majority of your creditors to accept the proposal for insolvency, was planned for April 2009.

For the time being the options available to the equity challenged British public who are struggling with debt and are not wishing to go bankrupt is either seeking debt management advice or some form or individual insolvency arrangement.

The New Bankruptcy Laws Make it Harder to File Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

The most recent changes to bankruptcy laws might cause it to be more challenging for you to file bankruptcy. If you’re in a higher income bracket you’ll no longer be allowed to utilize Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Instead, you’ll have to file under Chapter 13 bankruptcy and pay off at least a few of your creditors. If you would like to file bankkruptcy, you must take part in credit guidance prior to filing. You’re also required to go to additional counseling in the area of budgeting and debt management. The extra counseling is a prerequisite to acquire a release of your debts. And, since the law imposes new demands on attorneys, you might have a tougher time getting a attorney to accept your bankruptcy case.

Modified Eligibility for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

Under the past bankruptcy laws, you were allowed to select the type of bankruptcy that seemed best for you. In almost all cases that would be a Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation rather than a Chapter 13 bankruptcy repayment. But, if you’re in a high income bracket, the new bankruptcy laws won’t permit you to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

To find out whether you’re able to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy under the new bankruptcy laws, you must first evaluate your “current monthly income” against the median income for a family unit of your size in your state. If your income is lower than or equivalent to the median, you’ll be able to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. If it’s more than the median, however, you must pass a new test to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The other test is known as “the means test.”

The purpose of the means test is to ascertain whether you have sufficient free income, after deducting certain permitted expenses and mandatory debt payments, to make payments on a Chapter 13 plan. To find out whether you pass the means test, you deduct certain allowed expenses and debt payments from your current monthly income. If the money that’s left over after these computations is under a specific amount, you’ll be able to file for Chapter 7.

Counseling Prerequisites

Prior to filing for bankruptcy under either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13, you must complete credit counseling with an agency sanctioned by the United States Trustee’s office. The reason for this counseling requirement is that it assists you in determining whether you actually want to file for bankruptcy or whether an informal repayment plan will help you reclaim your financial stability.

Counseling is necessary even if it’s evident that a repayment plan isn’t workable for you. You’re required merely to participate in the counseling. You don’t have to go along with any repayment plan the agency proposes. Even so, before you’ll be able to file bankruptcy, you’ll have to introduce any repayment program the agency offers along with a certificate showing that you finished the counseling.

Near the end of your bankruptcy lawsuit, you’ll have to go to a new counseling session. This counseling session is fashioned to teach you personal financial management skills. You can’t receive the discharge that cancels out your debts until you submit proof to the court that you accomplished this requirement.

Lawyers May Be Harder to Locate — and a Lot More Pricey

The new bankruptcy laws do add numerous complicated requirements to bankruptcy filings. Some of these brand-new requirements impose more duties on attorneys leading to bankruptcy cases being more time intensive. Among the major new demands on lawyers is that they must now personally ensure the accuracy of all the info their clients give them. That extra demand means that attorneys must spend significant amounts of time on every bankruptcy suit. Thus, they’ll charge more to handle each bankruptcy suit. The new bankruptcy law requirements have actually squeezed a few bankruptcy attorneys out of the field totally.

Some Chapter 13 Filers Will Learn to Survive on Less

When you filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy under the previous bankruptcy laws, you had to dedicate all of your available income to your repayment plan. The old bankruptcy laws defined usable income as that which you had leftover after paying your actual living expenses. The new bankruptcy laws have changed this computation. While you still must hand over all of your disposable income, if your income is greater than the median in your state, you don’t get to figure your available income based on your real expenses. Instead, you have to calculate your spendable income using allowed expense sums prepared by the IRS. And these allowed expense numbers must be deducted from your average income during the six months before filing bankruptcy, not from your pay every month.

More Changes

There are more modifications that can impact you negatively if you’re filing or planning on filing bankruptcy. Do your research on the new bankruptcy laws and make sure you know the impact they have on your bankruptcy filing.

Are you trying to avoid bankruptcy? Don’t worry there is a way to sort out your debt and produce a good financial future.

It’s easy for debts to get out of control, today’s bustling and troubled world brings many challenges. Overspending, unrestricted spending, a job loss or illness can all result to money problems.

The way to head off bankruptcy will be different for everyone depending on the size of their debts and other personalized circumstances such as job surety, asset value and varying other aspects. You need to get hold of a professional money manager or debt adviser such as an accountant or bankruptcy lawyer but before you do that you need to ensure your creditors know what’s occurring. The people you owe money to will be very keen to speak to you about your debts if you are falling behind in repayments, keeping in contact with them is really critical.

Nevertheless, if your state of affairs is becoming really acute and you have creditors mailing court appearance dates and or threatening to send you bankrupt then you must act quickly and contact one of the experts named above, an known bankruptcy lawyer could be your optimum choice if things have gotten to this degree.

With some professional help it will be easy to devise payment programs that suit you with all your lenders and from there they are bound by those agreements. This should save you of those tough phone calls or knocks at the door from someone threatening you with court-ordered action if you don’t pay.These types of arrangements are part of the Bankruptcy Act and in most circumstances will leave a very unfavorable record on your credit report for years into the future so be certain to educate yourself well on the little differences between debt agreements and full scale bankruptcy; the main difference really is that in one case you are paying back your debts and your current assests are somewhat safe from repossession compared to bankruptcy where you pay nothing back unless over a tested income threshold and some assests can be sold to fund your bankrupt estate.

So to avoid bankruptcy there are a few things you need to be positive you’re taking care of; keep the channels of communication open with your creditors, speak to professional advisors and get agreements that you can afford and that protect your current assets.