www.iva.co.uk

How long on average does it take for an iva to start. Do the creditors vote quickly. What advice can you give me if I have payments due while I am waiting for the iva to start.

Thanks

Hi Mark. How ling it takes depends upon how complex your affairs are and how quickly you can get together all the required paperwork. On average if everything is straightforward, around 8 weeks, give or take.

Once you have decided this is the way you want to go you can choose to either make token payments or suspend repayments entirely and squirrel the money away for the inevitable rainy day. Many do the former, I did the latter. It doesn't seem to make any difference to the outcome.

I would suggest you open a new bank account if you have any debts to your current bank. This may be easier to do now rather than after the debts start to default.

From the time you first hold discussions with an IP with a view to seeking advice, to making your decision, getting the IVA proposed and holding the creditors meeting generally takes between 6 to 8 weeks in my experience. However it can take much longer if you are not forthcoming with the documentation required, or much shorter if there is a need to move quickly - for instance if you are under threat from creditor action such as charging orders or bankruptcy proceedings.

Creditors will generally vote well in time before the meeting, but there is no set timescale for this and in reality they can come in with their votes right up until the time the meeting commences.

I can concur with Foggy that it makes absolutely no difference whether you continue to make token or pro-rata payments to your creditors during this period, or whether you choose to save for a modest contingency fund.

We saved our payments to creditors to build a small contingency up ... Certainly saw us through the first year of emergencies

Welcome to the forum Mark. Notwithstanding all of the above, from your initial contact with your chosen IVA company, the pressure of debt, or it seemed to me, to be instantly eroded. In that I realised the situation and started to proceed with it positively. The first phone call was no big deal but from that moment I knew myself, I was at last going in the right direction. It really did alleviate and incredible amount of angst and stress.

Hi mark
Would suggest you get plenty of advise to be honest if I had found this forum before iva I would have researched ins and outs of iva and probably gone down debt management route first as it stands at the moment it's going to cost a lot of money in fees for procreate of doing iva

Welshwiz

How long would it have taken you to repay your debts in a DMP as a matter of interest welshwiz?