Quintin Zimmerman of Liddles Attorneys says that “as a debt review attorney, the greatest frustration we experience in expeditiously issuing debt review court applications is the delay in obtaining the original confirmatory affidavits from consumers”.
In terms of the NCA regulations and the rules of court, the courts require that the consumer’s original confirmatory affidavit must be included as part of the issued court application.
The National Credit Act sets out a time period when people first start debt review in which credit providers have to behave themselves, but if that time period passes, then some nasty credit providers can try to get out of the process.
While most credit providers like to cooperate with the debt review process, they also want to get things sorted out as soon as possible, and don’t want things to drag on and on unresolved.
Quintin says that: “from date of signing the Form 16, we (the debt counsellors and attorneys) only have 60 days to get the matter to court to prevent credit providers from being able to terminate the debt review process”.
While debt reviews does not have to be put before a court within this time period (it can be impossible for a variety or reasons) it is considered by most attorneys as ‘best practice’ to do so. This is because once the matter is set down in court, then credit providers will not want to start a second lot of legal action (and waste another courts time). This means that set down matters help protect consumer’s assets, and ensure better cooperation from credit providers (or recourse for consumers if a naughty credit provider tries to cause problems).
Quintin has this advice for consumers: “when you receive the confirmatory affidavit from the attorneys, be responsible and please go as soon as possible to a commissioner of oaths to sign the affidavit. A timeously issued debt review court application is for your legal protection and peace of mind”.
