A day of rest

Ah ha, at last I have something to hang my hat on and this time it is from Trading Standards!
It all started with an onslaught from National Westminster Bank making payment demands in spite of us having a court decision in our favour stating that this debt is unrecoverable.
Until recently I could not grasp any kind of understanding of this case. Firstly, even though my name was on it, I had no knowledge of this arrangement let alone had use of any of the credit cards. Having resigned myself to this scenario, yet again, I decided to say nothing rather than enter into another battle with my husband. I was, however, even more mystified to find out that "we" had taken Nat West to court via a Birmingham solicitors that we had no previously dealings with. It transpired that my husband had answered an internet advert that had ultimately directed him towards this course of action and we had won our case against Nat West. One might think that this result would mean one less creditor on my list to placate. Wrong! This actually resulted in the debt being sold on so I have had a constant stream of threatening letters from a collection agency since the beginning of this year.
"OK," I thought," time for plan B".
I wrote and fully explained our position. Result, more demands, this time from Nat West, because the collection agency wanted nothing more to do with it. I could feel the stress levels rise in me as I try and resign myself to the fact that some things are beyond my communication skills but, while I am festering over this unpleasant fact, I receive a phone call of mercy that has lifted me out of this hopeless state of mind. Today I can rejoice in the help that the powers that be have sent me. A gift in the form of a call from Trading Standards office about another matter has given me an opportunity to discuss the Nat West bombardment with them. I discover that these bully boy tactics are common place in the banks collection departments these days. I am told that I will now be referred to their enforcement department so that I can give them the full details and in an instant it feels like a wonderful reprieve.
Today has become a day of rest for me. Today I can pass on the fight to someone else and take a much needed break from this never ending onslaught. It is, after all, the first week of my children's Easter break and it feels so good not to have to carry this burden for a while. Today I am able to return to just being a Mum and for this reprieve I am truly grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you God, the Universe and the powers that be!!

Lost love

My husband is a quiet sensitive man and until recently I believed he would never lie to me.  I admired his composure, clarity and intelligence.  Third time around I felt sure I had, at last, made the right match.  After fifteen years of marriage I discovered I hardly knew him at all.

On a damp October morning, after discovering the extent of his borrowing, I felt as if I had woken next to a monster, a sentiment I attempted to share with him. He laughingly replied he did not see it as lying but I had simply not asked the right questions. His abdication of responsibility struck more fear in my bones than any creditor on my doorstep threatening a claw hammer through the skull as his reward.

To this day I cannot fathom how he thought his actions were justified or his words to me truthful. However, I live in hope that one day I will be able to forgive him and  I will once again be able to look him in the eye and see the honourable man I fell in love with.

A pocket full of joy

I have struggled to keep things in perspective over the past few days and I think it has alot to do with down time. After all, as I am so often told these days, "It is only money" and inevitably one does get used to anything, eventually. However, now the fear is back and I think it may well be because I have, on occasion recently, been slightly more relaxed.

Braced for abuse on every front in the beginning there was certainly no respite when I initially discovered the size of our financial problems on a dull life changing October day in 2008. I was bombarded from all sides by every means of communication known to man. People were constantly knocking on the door of my home, while others chose to approach me at school.  Each one panic stricken with concern over whether they were going to have their money returned.

The phone rang up to forty times a day, day in day out and the postman delivered armfuls of hate mail every morning. Everyone wanted to know the same thing. How was it possible for my husband to be without funds when he had repeatedly promised them if they were patient he would pay. Disadvantaged by the beauty of our prestigious sixteenth century home, those who arrived on our doorstep struggled to believe there was no longer any money after they had receive so many assurances to the contrary. Some I discovered, had waited almost two years to be paid. My husband had appeared to them, as he had to me, to be a rock of integrity who did not have the disposition to go back on his word.

During these early days I lived in a state of constant panic, surviving only on an instinct to fight for my families safety. Thankfully fear kept the adrenalin flowing while  functioning in overdrive meant I needed little in the way of sleep or food. Having lived the life of a middle class house wife ten years, I had to dig deep to encourage the former business woman in me to resurface. I put aside an overwhelming need to grieve for a life lost and instead forced myself to acquire the expertise necessary to explore all options including find a home that wasn't a local authority shelter.  Every single minute of this two year period was endured "braced" for more revelations from yet another friend or relative who had, unbeknown to me, lent my husband money.

At the height of our financial distress my hair fell out in handfuls leaving me completely and I lost more than two stone in weight over a matter of weeks. I regularly shook from head to toe with the shock of what I was finding out about my husband’s business dealings. Sickened with the shame I had unknowingly acquired enormous debts to my name, I was terrified of the prospect of having no means with which to repay them. Angered by our predicament, I could not bring myself to look my husband in the eye let alone speak to him for the diappointment I felt and the fear of more lies.

In contrast, two and a half years on, there are now times when I am truly happy. I can, on occasion, feel contentment and sometimes pure joy. In situations where I have a role to play, such as at my children's new schools functions, I completely forget I am actually a “distasteful debtor" who has been tarnished for life by her husband’s business gambles. Thankfully, I no longer wake every morning ready to cry with the hopelessness of our situation and mercifully the hate mail arrives much more infrequently nowadays.  My life has taken on a semblance of normality and I love the feeling of living without fear haunting every crevice of my life.

However,still it only takes one letter to plunge me back into a state of panic and sadly this is what has happen again this week. Irrational though this may be my panic can last anything up to three days after which I am left completely spent. Unless I secure debt forgiveness, I am destined to live the next twelve years stepping from heaven and into hell because we have no money with which to pay our creditors and they just won't listen.

It for this reason I fight for just a pocket full of joy.

Hear No Evil, See No Evil

On receipt of yet another fatuous reply to my request for debt forgiveness, I wrote to Lloyds TSB to enquire if their continued unaffordable requests for a payment arrangement from my husband's £11,987 salary as a retail warehouseman, were in  fact a covert bid to securing funding for my husband's business debts via the proceeds of ill gotten gains. Assuming this was indeed their objective, I assured them, I had left no revenue producing stone unturned since the onset of our financial demise and went on to explain why some of the less mainstream avenues open to us, which would normally be more likely to associated with a more underground approach to business, would still leave us unable to repay an alleged £900,980 of unsecured debt.

 

Selling my kidney on the black market.

Having explored this option via the Internet it seemed unlikely raising capital in this manner would produce much more than £5,000 per kidney and, as my husband and I would need at least one kidney each if we were to remain functioning members of society for several more years to come, I felt £10,000 didn't not provide a sufficient return to allay a million pounds worth of creditors. I explained it was for this reason plans of this kind been had abandoned.

Sex industry

Alternatively, if Lloyds hoped I might instead make a killing in this industry, I felt bound to point out I had spotted some major flaws in a marketing strategy of this kind. To begin with I am a fifty three year old housewife and mother, and although I am told I was quite something in my youth, I am now completely bald from stress related Alopecia and frequently look haggard, grey faced and much older than my years because of the unrelenting financial pressure I am now under from creditors. Furthermore, I felt it only fair to make it perfectly clear, my body after giving birth to five children, was most unlikely to be a lucrative vehicle from which to reap the rewards they seemed to be anticipating.

Hoping at the very least for a little humour in reply I was, needless to say, disappointed to find I was merely thanked in the usual neutral tones for taking the time to explain our circumstances and then asked, in very large type, if I would like all future correspondence in braille.

When asked what one must do if people can't hear you my three year old grandson said. "You have to shout louder."  Sadly for me I am unconvinced this tactic will ever work for me when I can only conclude from personal experience that Lloyds Banking Group are deaf and now, on top of all their other misconceptions, they appear to believe I'm blind!

Spoon free

Yesterday, my youngest son asked me why no-one ever mentions the spoons. Initially I struggled to follow his thinking but, with a little more nine year old logic imparted, it became clear  he was referring to laying the table and emptying the dishwasher. Until this point I not given "spoon status" any thought and indeed struggled to explain why they were rarely mentioned. It did, however, help me realise there are certain things that rarely get a mention in spite of being a large part of our everyday lives.

Debts most certainly fall into this category. The individual rarely speaks freely about how much they have borrowed or how they are managing to service their debt and often assume the lenders would not lend unless they were sure their money could be repaid.  During my time as a consultant in the financial services industry I regularly discovered many clients had no real understanding of the terms of their loans let alone how much they had borrowed. The focus of the companies offering these lines of credit was always on what the loan could buy and how quickly it could be arranged. By passively encouraging the individual to give little attention to the financial commitment or their ability to pay the "Let's face it they wouldn't be offering it to me if they didn't think I could afford it" attitude has been perpetuated. Factor in the temptation of discounted payments and payment free periods and it becomes a financial candy store of "money for nothing". Such an irresponsible lending attitude is precisely the reason a large number of people currently find themselves in financial free fall.

I wish I could say it was this naivety that caused our own downfall but sadly, I don't believe it was. I think my 45 year old exceptionally intellectually able husband believed he was sufficiently savvy to be able profit from banking greed and be home and dry before interest payments began to bite. Over estimating his abilities on many levels for many years allowed him to romance himself into thinking, "They would not be lending if they did not believe the business was viable".  In reality, I have since discovered, the banks and credit card companies didn't care. They were happy to lend to virtually anyone as long as they owned their own house and had a clean credit history.  I believe my husband fell under the spell of his own smoke and mirror show and only woke up to the nightmare he had created when his brother died. By this time our unsecured debt was close to £1,000,000.

I also believe, in his mind, our predicament was unmentionable to anyone, most of all me. I had been singing the praises of his endeavours for years to friends and family, not least because I genuinely believed he was doing really well. He regularly discussed the business and his plans for its future with me and this future looked bright. I even had the impression that I was being involved in the decision making, albeit not the day to day running of things. Never once did I ask for documentary evidence because I trusted him implicitly. Little did I know he was only talking about his dreams and not the unpalatable reality. With hindsight, I became an accessory, and because of my confidence in him, and my personal track record as a business woman, our family and friends had even more faith in his abilities than perhaps they would have done otherwise.

It came as an immense shock to discover many of these very same people had been asked to help finance his business in the years running up to the credit crisis but it was as an even greater shock to find he had borrowed from everyone who had said yes. It was, however, humiliating to be made aware of this when speaking to friends and family for support only to find I was faced with the question as to when we would be able to pay them back. For me it was nothing short of having the ground whipped out from under my feet.

I firmly believe I would and could have saved us if I had been made aware of what course my husband had set for us sooner. If  only it was socially acceptable to talk openly about debt our friends and family may not have been paralysed by this unwritten decree that forbids personal finances from being openly discussed. I may well have had the opportunity to make the outcome for our fragile ship on what became overwhelmingly stormy waters a very different but,..... they didn't and I didn't and we are where we are because there are some things that are rarely mentioned...like  spoons.

Passionate beliefs

I am told to believe in something passionately is the way in which to make it a reality and conceptualising in this way has been the driving force for my continued attempts to piece our lives back together. While frequently advised to throw the bankruptcy towel into the arena by those without the constitution for tumultuous seas, I have refused to allow lending sharks to pick over the bones HBOS have already stripped bare because,

• I believe passionately financial institutions should not lend residential mortgage   money to those with £446,000 outstanding on credit cards.
• I believe passionately banks should not advance £3,500,000 in commercial mortgages without evidence of taxable income and assets.
• I believe passionately it is negligent for lenders to ask wive's to sign away a family home to support a husband's business without illustrating how they have assessed payment affordability.
• I believe passionately it is irresponsible for a bank to instruct the conveyance of a family home without giving a wife independent advice.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for a creditor to lay siege to a woman and her children in her home, until such time as the police arrive, with sub machine guns, wearing riot gear, to remove them.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any family to be hounded by phone and threatened by debt collection agencies who pretend they don't know the financial position of the vulnerable despite hundreds of letters to the contrary.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to borrow £17,000 from the parents of his children's school friends.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to borrow £65,000 from his and his wife's family.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to secure the equity in his step daughter's and grand children's home against a business debt.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to sign documents which will give  unpaid tradesmen the authoriy to take away gifts made to his wife from her parents.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to tell anyone he can afford to  pay them when he does not know how he will achieve this.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man under any circumstances to keep all of the above from his wife with lies.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to go to any lengths to avoid taking responsibilities for his actions and instead choosing to blame others.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to lead his whole family to the edge of a financial precipice without asking them if they wish to go there.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to pretend he has his difficulties in hand in order to avoid losing face.

But I also believe passionately,

•  No man should be hounded by creditors to the point of suicide.
• No man should lose his brother (age 44) and his mother (age 67) to Motor Neurone Disease three weeks apart. 

 And above all else I believe passionately

• No child should be forced to grow up without a father as consequence of having financial difficulties.

It is for these reasons I am still here and for these reasons I continue to fight back.... passionately.

Stand and deliver

I have been unable to think let alone write a post for the past four days and instead have ground to a halt from both exhaustion and brain overload. To the passerby, and even to most of my friends and family, I have functioned perfectly well over the last few days while cheerfully accepting more Friends  of the school challenges. I have successfully progressed my case with the FSA regarding the Bank of Scotland and even managed to be concise and business like in my correspondence. The proverbial rabbit is always pulled out of the hat, without fail, if I have I anything to do with it! This, after all, is my talent and it is one I am well known for.

However although I continue to step up to the mark, in reality, today it is not me who is present but merely an echo. Today the enthusiastic and energetic me has been banished by the pain in my head and I am left to look on at myself in helpless defeat as I am forced to succumb to the obliteration of migraine yet again. Gripped regularly with this stress induced master who often takes as much as three days to vacate, the pain, nausea and impaired vision often reaches levels which both consume my head and weigh down each of my limbs. Each time it happens I feel sure I will be unable to cope, but inevitably I always do. For me it is the tortuous price of each success and every failure.

Unable to share my affliction with those around me, I continue to smile while preparing Sunday lunch for twelve as planned or agree with the Head attending to an extra issue will be no trouble at all. To give in to this illness is completely beyond me while hiding it existence has become the purist of art forms. Unprepared to give this uninvited interloper an introduction to the people in my life it always remains my secret until long after its departure.

Finely honed over fifty three years my methods of concealment are exemplary and for the reason I am always available, without exception, to stand and deliver.