Date 30.12.14
I recently had a case of a client debtor suffering from a serious health issue, that was causing stress and hardship to both her personal and financial life. The client didn’t have a will in spite of having some significant assets including being on title of a house.
The client held a 33% interest in a house, and her father and sister were also on title. The house was mortgage free and worth about $1.4 million dollars.
At the time I met her, the client was unemployed and battling cancer. She didn’t want her financial situation to affect her ownership in the house, nor that of her father and sister. Fortunately, her sister was able to assist her financially for a while, but could not cover all her expenses and bills.
This gave the client some time to deal with her illness. She believed that she would regain her health after cancer surgery and eventually be able to look for work again. However, it didn’t provide full relief of her current financial needs, including debts she owed, so she came to me for help.
We discussed her options and decided that the best solution for her was a Consumer Proposal. It was affordable for her and would give her protection from her creditors. This provided protection for the house as creditors would not be able to take her to court to try and force a sale of the house to recover their money.
I was able to set up a consumer proposal with lower, more affordable monthly payments for the first year—a critical time during her recovery—that would increase to higher monthly payments for the remaining four years of her consumer proposal. Now she doesn’t have to worry about her debts and can focus on recovering her health.
This case is a good example of how a Consumer Proposal can be structured with a bit of flexibility that benefits both the debtor and the creditors.