Lowell full and final settlement

[Yash1008]

Hi,
I have about £26000 debt that includes 3 credit cards and a personal loan. They were all defaulted in 2015/16 and all of them were transferred to debt collection agencies. one of them was bought by Lowell (Halifax credit card amounting to £5500 and they added interest on it made it to £6500 and went to court and got a CCJ on it and that time, I was going through a severe depression due to a bad break up of marriage and I couldn't manage myself and my finances well and I lost my job and got evicted from the house as well. I lived with some relatives for sometime until I found a new job and moved back to London. During that period, I redirected my mails to a friend and didn’t collect my post until the CCJ was already issued against me. I was not even aware that a monthly affordable instalment can be arranged with the lenders and finally ended up in defaults)
It took around 6 years for me to come back to life again and moved on. One of my colleagues advised me that monthly affordable instalments can be arranged with the debt collectors too and I immediately called everyone and have gone through my income and expenses and arranged instalments accordingly.
I got married again last year and we live as lodgers at present. Unfortunately, my landlord was diagnosed with cancer and after a few months in the hospital, they moved him to permanent care home and He wants to sell this house to pay his rental towards accommodation and nursing costs. We won’t be able to survive London rentals and even if we will be able to manage somehow, it will be difficult to pay the monthly instalments towards the debt.
One of my friends has kindly offered to give me £5000, if I can manage to settle those debts in full and final settlements.
I composed a letter to be sent to all the lenders explaining my situation and offering them full and final settlement amounts in pro-rota basis. I called Lowell to know my outstanding debt and it is about £6110 now and they refused to take any offer of full and final settlement as it has got CCJ on it and asked me to pay £10/ month even if it takes 600 months to pay it off (I very much doubt that I will live that longer as I am already 45) I even said, it is ok for me even if they mark CCJ as partially settled. But they were not ready for it and wants the full amount or continue paying £10/month.
I am kind of stuck here and it is giving me sleepless nights and scared that I might slip into depression again. Can someone help me to resolve this with Lowell please?
CCJ was issued in March 2016. Can they still enforce it even after 6 years after CCJ and get a fresh one against that debt and attach my property in future (If I were ever able to buy a house in the future)

Many Thanks & Regards,
Yash

[Awareness]

Hey Yash,

Really sorry to hear about all of this. I think anyone on this forum knows that dealing with debt is unpleasant without your creditor(s) making it hard for you.

First of all, I am not qualified to give debt advice and I'm not going to, but I can offer some useful sign-posts as it sounds like you've not explored many of your options.

1. Have you approached a debt management ("DM") charity, like Step Change for help? I deal with them a fair bit in my work (as well as private debt management firms) and have seen Lowell in DM plans plenty of times. Step Change can offer free advice and they'll be very sympathetic to your situation.

https://www.stepchange.org/contact-us.aspx

2. I'm not sure what work you're doing, but have you thought about an IVA? Again this is something Step Change (or other firms) might be able to help with. The idea is that a lot of your debt will be written off on the condition you pay certain amounts per month to your creditor(s) for 5-6 years. Some useful info here;

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/de...-arrangements/

3. You could also explore a Debt Relief Order ("DRO"). Like most of these things there are rules/restrictions as can who can have one (although there's no restriction on DM plans that I am aware of).

https://www.gov.uk/options-for-payin...-relief-orders

4. Lastly, you could consider bankruptcy, but this would be extreme and it's always better to look at the less serious options first.

There may be other things you can look at, but it sounds like you're doing a good job of being constructive with your approach and keeping a level head! Many would just brush it under the carpet, so good for you!

Hope this helps.
A

[Awareness]

Also to answer your question about enforcement; yes, it can be enforced after 6 years. Although, the court would probably ask why they haven't tried to enforce the debt before now. Although they can't apply (to my knowledge) for a CCJ on the same debt. Once they've got it, it stays and I would think carefully about trying to get by by ignoring it altogether.