How to Protect yourself from your creditors.
The advantage of going under Debt Review is as soon as you have signed the agreement with a debt review company and paid their fees as well as the lawyer and court fees you are protected from creditors and they can no longer come to your house and take your belongings. In actual fact they cannot even contact you anymore. They have to work through the debt councillor.
Going under Debt Review rather than sequestration has the benefit of being considerably less costly and once you have paid off your debt you will have a clean credit record, where with sequestration you have to wait five years to be rehabilitated. Yes with sequestration your debt is written off and with Debt Review you still have to pay off your debt.
You cannot go under Debt review if judgement has already been taken against you.
Debt review only applies to debt made on items or services purchased. Where you have a cell phone contract or a hire purchase agreement or residual lease with a bank for your car or your monthly rental of a house or your electricity bill, you cannot place these under debt review.
If you have purchased your vehicle with an instalment sale you can place it under debt review.
One thing to watch out for is if you miss or make a late payment while under debt review, you will stop being protected and your creditors can demand full payment.
You will have the benefit of paying a fixed monthly premium that you can afford. Should you pay off one of your creditors the part that went to that creditor will be distributed amongst the remaining creditors.
The creditors cannot inflate the interest on your loan and has to abide by the court ruling on what is acceptable.
Should your financial situation change for the better you may opt to stop being under debt review and start paying the normal monthly instalments. You may also stay under debt review and pay additional amounts towards your debt paying them off faster.
If you or your spouse go under debt review the other party may not also go under debt review.
While under debt review you may not make any new debt or enter into a new monthly contract for debt. Banks and finance houses will not grant you a loan.