How it started
Some of the envelopes were in French. From solicitors, I assumed, though I didn’t know which ones or what they were claiming. They’d arrived alongside everything else, and I’d left them in the pile with the rest.
I had owned seven buy-to-let properties — some in the UK, two overseas. All seven had been repossessed. And instead of the repossessions ending the matter, the debts had multiplied: shortfalls from the UK mortgage lenders, correspondence in French I couldn’t read, HMRC making a claim against a family trust we had held for years, and two mortgage lenders who had already obtained final charging orders on our family home. There were threats of bailiff action too. Creditors were calling every day. I had stopped answering the phone entirely.
Looking back, I was dealing with mild depression and physical pain at the same time, though I didn’t name it like that then. I was just unable to cope — with any of it. I walked past the letters on the desk every morning. My wife was frightened, and I had nothing to offer her. I couldn’t see how any single person or firm could deal with all of this at once.
A friend of my wife’s recommended Lightside. I was sceptical. Eventually, reluctantly, I called.
The outcome, in brief
Advised by Priti Shah, Lightside — working with Tax Gains (tax investigations)
I came to Lightside with repossessed properties, letters in two languages, and an HMRC claim I didn’t fully understand. What came back — over time — was clarity, a settled arrangement, and my health. I wouldn’t have believed that was possible from where I was sitting.
If your situation involves more than one type of problem and it does not seem to fit the categories you have seen elsewhere, that is not a reason to wait. It is exactly the kind of case where the right starting point matters most.
The work behind the outcome
The remaining unsecured debts were placed under a creditor arrangement with annual repayments agreed and reviewed. There has been no enforcement action since, and no bankruptcy petition was issued. Mr. TA returned to work as his health improved — mental and physical — and he enjoys spending time with his grandchildren.
Cases like Mr. and Mrs. TA’s are complex not just financially but personally. Mr. TA was suffering from depression and physical pain, and his reluctance to engage was rooted in both. We started not with analysis but with action: sitting with him, opening every letter, and shredding two black bin bags of outdated correspondence. What emerged was not one problem but several distinct ones — each requiring a different approach, and one requiring expertise we did not hold in-house.
The HMRC claim against the family trust was that specialist element. We brought in Tax Gains, a tax investigations firm, to handle it directly. Their work reduced the HMRC liability to nil — an outcome that had not seemed certain at the outset. The overseas property debts, while initially presenting as foreign correspondence, resolved into standard creditor relationships once the relevant UK connections and shortfall positions were established. The family home had two final charging orders with active bailiff threats; we advised a controlled sale, with proceeds distributed to the adult children per the existing trust terms — protecting the equity rather than allowing a forced sale to consume it.
The remaining unsecured debts were placed under a creditor arrangement with annual repayments agreed and reviewed. There has been no enforcement action since, and no bankruptcy petition was issued. Mr. TA returned to work as his health improved — mental and physical — and he enjoys spending time with his grandchildren.