How To Legally Write Off Credit Card Debt

by George on August 21, 2009

There are many ways to write off credit card debt legally. These can be divided into two broad types: writing off the debt because the original credit agreement was not properly drafted according to the various U.K. laws which are designed to protect consumer; and writing off the debt as part of an instrument such as an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA).

These are two equally powerful and perfectly lawful actions that anyone can take to write off their credit card debt legally. The first is as lawful as the second, although it has been subject to a lot of derision in the media recently because of vested interest in the banks. Furthermore, these two types of action may be used together to dramatic effect in wiping out individual debt until it is a small fraction of the original amount owed. Then that amount is paid off over a number of years.

So let’s take the first type of action by which you can write off credit card debt legally. This is where you check that the original contract was properly drafted. When the Consumer Credit Act of 1974 was amended in 2006 it had a section taken out which ensured that any credit agreement signed before 6th April 2007 (not an arbitrary date, but the first day of the financial year immediately following) had to include certain details known as the prescribed terms written into the contract. These included the size of the loan or agreed credit limit in the case of credit cards, the interest rate and other metrics related to the credit agreement. It also had to be signed.

You start the ball rolling here by asking the lender (or the owner of the debt, if it has defaulted and has been bought by a debt purchasing company) for a fair copy of the original credit agreement. Here is where debt purchasers usually fall at the first hurdle, as most debts bought by debt purchasing companies are bought in bundles or job lots, with little or no regard for the necessities of accompanying legal documentation. These firms buy debts at a fraction of what they were originally worth and try to convince you to give them the full amount of the original sum. They don’t generally care about the paperwork.

If they can’t produce the original document then the debt becomes unenforceable and you’ve won. Not even a court could enforce recovery of it. But if the original credit agreement is produced and you have access to a copy then you can scrutinize this to see if it contains the prescribed terms. If it does not contain ALL of the prescribed terms then again the debt is unenforceable, and again you have won.

The second way you can write off credit card debt legally is to take out an IVA, as described above. A qualified insolvency practitioner will help you with this, and will work out your income and expenditure. S/he will then come to an agreement with your creditors and the bulk of the debt will be written off (sometimes as much as 75%, although claims you see in adverts of 90% are ridiculous) and you will then be left with a structured settlement which you will pay off over five years (six in Scotland, where it is known as a Protected Trust Deed).

When used together as a means to write off credit card debt legally, you may indeed reduce your debt to around 10% of the original (this may well be where the above mentioned crazy claims come from, but they’re just not telling you the full story), but only if you use both perfectly lawful procedures.

How To Legally Write Off Credit Card Debt

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