IVA Advice
Individual Voluntary Arrangements
What is an IVA ?
An IVA (Individual Voluntary Arrangement) is a legal agreement which can be made to assist someone with serious debt and allow them to repay their debts within an agreed timescale. With the correct IVA advice someone with crippling debt can get a fresh start financially. The main benefits of an IVA are that it will normally allow for only a percentage of the debt to be repaid, for payments to be of a manageable level and for the debts to be cleared within a defined term, usually five years.
An IVA is applied for via court on your behalf by a licensed professional known as an Insolvency Practitioner. The application will include details of how much you can afford to repay and over what timescale. For your application to be approved your creditors will be asked to vote on whether they accept the terms of the IVA, the voting process is described here.
An approved IVA is legally binding, your creditors have accepted it and provided you continue to make the agreed repayments you will be free from debt when the term of the IVA is complete. Once the IVA term is complete you may have only paid back a percentage of your original debt but the rest of your debt will be written off by your creditors.
An IVA is a legally binding agreement agreed and documented by court is different from other types of debt management agreements or plans for that reason.