My son, aged 26, has just broken up with his partner and their two daughters. As part of that break up he has moved back home and I’ve had my first opportunity to look at his finances over the last year.
He works for the NHS on a salary of around £18,000 pa on which he was supporting his family, paying £750 per month rent and all the usual household bills. The most glaring thing that came to light was that 2 months ago he signed up for a car hire purchase agreement with Black Horse through Mercedes Benz. I was horrified to discover that he was allowed to sign up to this purchase, committing him to repayments of £288 per month, which he could clearly never have afforded.
However, now I’m digging deeper into his finances I’ve also found that he has credit card debts of around £1,000 and took out a number of payday loans last year totaling, I believe, around £6,000 which he also couldn’t repay so was placed under a debt management plan earlier this year requiring him to repay £120 per month to clear it.
So, at the time he took out the hire purchase agreement he had a low salary, high family outgoings, credit card debts and was under a debt management plan to clear his payday loans.
My son is clearly guilty of stupidity, but aren’t there/shouldn’t there be checks in place on car finance such as this to ensure affordability before gullible people are allowed to sign away money they cannot hope to repay?
Do we have a case for claiming any kind of negligence on the part of either Mercedes Benz or Black Horse for mis-selling the car and its associated finance deal?
At this stage should I be considering bankruptcy, an IVA or similar?
Many thanks in anticipation of your help and advice.
He works for the NHS on a salary of around £18,000 pa on which he was supporting his family, paying £750 per month rent and all the usual household bills. The most glaring thing that came to light was that 2 months ago he signed up for a car hire purchase agreement with Black Horse through Mercedes Benz. I was horrified to discover that he was allowed to sign up to this purchase, committing him to repayments of £288 per month, which he could clearly never have afforded.
However, now I’m digging deeper into his finances I’ve also found that he has credit card debts of around £1,000 and took out a number of payday loans last year totaling, I believe, around £6,000 which he also couldn’t repay so was placed under a debt management plan earlier this year requiring him to repay £120 per month to clear it.
So, at the time he took out the hire purchase agreement he had a low salary, high family outgoings, credit card debts and was under a debt management plan to clear his payday loans.
My son is clearly guilty of stupidity, but aren’t there/shouldn’t there be checks in place on car finance such as this to ensure affordability before gullible people are allowed to sign away money they cannot hope to repay?
Do we have a case for claiming any kind of negligence on the part of either Mercedes Benz or Black Horse for mis-selling the car and its associated finance deal?
At this stage should I be considering bankruptcy, an IVA or similar?
Many thanks in anticipation of your help and advice.
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