hi there, to cut a very long story short ,

i was in partnership with someone in a building company and run into trouble due to clients not paying at the end of contracts etc. well we went to lloyds for an overdraft which they agreed to and as a director of the company my partner and i had to sign a form of guarantee against the company assets. we asked many times if we was liable personally ans was told we was not and the company assets would be the guarentee. well after a while we got behind again and had to close the business, after this we contacted the bank as we thought they would want first claim on the assets but they said that we was liable and they not interested in the company ! to our shock you can imagine. well my partner decided he was going to carry on with the company and pay the bank 300 pounds a month this was agreed without my signature as a partner. i wrote a letter to say i was out the company with my now ex partner signing. so he had in place he would pay the overdraft back at 300 a month agreed with the bank. now during this time i had no further contact with the bank for at least 8months and then my ex partner got in trouble again and the bank then came after me again.

my ex partner then entered an IVA and the whole of the overdraft was entered under the IVA which was agreed by the bank and he paid a lump sum to the IVA instead of a monthly amount. Now the bank has been chasing me again for the overdraft, can they chase the same debt twice if it has already been paig under the IVA ? please can you advise me on this as this has been a terrible strain on my family. this has been going on for over two years now and we can never relax.

king regards

snoops

In short - yes they can chase you for the debt because you are both joint and severally liable . Your partner has the protection of the IVA but you do not therefore whatever 'loss' the bank suffers as a result of your partner paying a proportion of the debt in his VA, you will be liable for the balance !

They are not chasing the debt twice, they are chasing all persons liable for the shared debt !

thanks for your advice i shall have to put something into practice myself then. they have asked me for the full debt again and i know my previous partner payed over half of it can i not ask them for the shortfall amount? many thanks

It seems unfiar that the debt was agreed in an IVA and because of the joint and several liability they do look for the balance.

One option is to find out what they settled for (pence in the pound) and offer them the same if you can- but if you say your partner paid over half then 20p in the pound should not be unreasonable.

Alternatively, you may be able to suggest a creditors arrangement where you pay what you can afford back PER MONTH. But this of course depends on whether you have any other debts. They may be more approachable as they will be getting quite a lot of something rather than nothing :-)

DONT FORGET !!!

Just because your partner is paying his share through an IVA, LLoyds may be still adding contractual interest and charges to the account so it is not certain how much you may be liable for. The other thorn in the side is that some IVa companies do not pay out until the end of the VA. This means that if you pay now, the debt is likely to be cleared by you so when your partners VA divvies out, Lloyds TSB will tell the IVA practitioner that the debt has been settled so more money for your partners other creditors.

The best way forward is to tell Lloyds that you will agree to repay your share providing that they stop interest and charges and confirm in writing !