We have a big problem...

tinkerbell21

Hi everyone,

Not sure if this is the right place to post this.

Its a bit of a long story, but here we go....

Okay, so around 2.5 years ago, my fiance was living at home with his sister and mum. His sister needed a car, but could not get a loan (due to having bad credit), no one would give her one. She convinced my fiance to get a loan out and buy her a car, and she would give him the money back. With hindsight, he has realised this is the most stupid thing he has done, as their is of course a reason why no one would give her a loan.

The loan was for £8000 over 5 years and the interest rate was sky high. So he got the loan out, she then decided she only needed 4000 for her car. So he then stuck the other 4000 in a high interest savings account, as the bank told him he could not pay it off the loan as you can only pay off the loan in full.

So he was pretty annoyed about that. Anyway, she decided she was giving him 100 a month. The repayments were 300 a month, which have no gone down to 260 a month since cancelling the PPI (thanks to this amazing site!!). He got the loan out in August 2007, she gave him 100 a month until Jan 2009, when she said she would give him 1200 Dec 2009. 400 of this is still outstanding.

She is basically taking the mick out of him. He admits it was a stupid thing to do, but we cannot change it now so are trying to deal with it. We moved in together in March last year, and in recent months she has been extremely horribe to him for no reason and keeps making excuses of why she cant pay him back.

Heres the bigger problem...
When the car was bought, he paid the company for her, and the car was put in her name. There is no solid proof that she actually owes him anything. Without him knowing, last year when he moved out, she swapped her car with a friends car. This car was worth much less than the car she got with the loan. The friend also gave her 500, she kept this. She did this without his permission. I know it was her car, but surely he had a right to know about it at least, as he hasnt paid him for it. We found out today that she has had the car she got off her friend scrapped and has kept the money for herself.

I really dont know what to do. We are getting married in July, and are struggling to pay for the wedding. We have no real proof of all this, she could turn around tomorrow and say she wasnt giving us a penny and I dont think there would be anything we could do about it.
There is still £8300 outstanding on the loan.

Obviously, if he could turn back time he would never have done all this, but we just need to deal with it now.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Any advice, would be much appreciated.

tinkerbell21

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Any advice, would be much appreciated.[/QUOTE]


Oops, dont know why I wrote that twice! xx

Ritchie74

Difficult one given the car was put in her name. What is the family situation? Can mum have a word - would that add more clout? Could mum pay the son monies due on the finance and take it out of future gifts/inheritance to the daughter?

dgl1001

what are you doing with the money in the high interest account; surely that could go towards repayments. also, have you thought about the sum claims court. If a family member (the mum for example) were to state it as eveidence, i'm sure that would be enough to recover costs back

tinkerbell21

This is also a problem, due to a very difficult and complicated family situation, his mum does not speak to my fiance. His parents are divorced, and his sister does not speak to his dad! Extremely complicated.

tinkerbell21

Thanks for the reply. Where would I get more info on the sum claims court?

Due to the family situation, the only witness so to say is me, and I dont know if that would be enough.

The problem is aswell though, my fiance doesn't seem to want to go down the court route. She has two little girls who he absolutely adores, and he keeps saying that he doesnt want to start demanding money for two reasons. One she will probably say that we cant see them anymore, or two, she will say things like 'I cant afford to buy food, nappies, etc'. She is on benefits, and he says he couldnt stand the thought of making her little girls go without toys, etc. (even though we are trying to pay for a wedding)

We have also starting arguing about it between us, which I dont want.

bouncydog1

There is evidence that he took out the loan.
The garage registered the car in the sisters name and your OH paid the finance company.
Does he have any evidence that she has made repayments to him for the loan e.g. was the money transferred from her bank account each month or did she pay him cash?
I have no legal experience not a solicitor, but it seems to me that if there is implied evidence of contract between them e.g. her making repayments to your OH for the loan and the vehicle being registered in her name, then that might support a claim against her for recovery of the outstanding debt.

I would put together all of the documentary evidence that you have and see if you can get some professional advise from a solicitor - I understand that some of them offer an appointment fee free.

The threat of legal action to recover the debt once you are sure of your legal position might just be enought to prompt the sister to schedule proper repayment. Oh and I wouldn't bother that she is family - she certainly hasn't behaved in a very sisterly way towards your OH so he should treat her in the same way that he would anyone else that owed him money that he has to work hard to repay.

tinkerbell21

Thanks bounbyd!!!. She paid him cash every single time. Which makes me think, she she knew EXACTLY what she was doing, and never planned to ever pay him back fully.

The only thing I could think of doing to get her to admit liability was..

Get him to phone her up and say we are really struggling to pay this loan off, and want to speak to the bank to see if theres anything we can do about it, i.e. make the repayments less each month. Tell her that we need her to write a letter saying why she can only give us £100 a month, etc, so we could take it into the bank with us. That way we have it in writing.

Does that seem like a good plan? Or do you think she would spot the 'trick' straight away?

tinkerbell21

That was supposed to say 'Thanks Bouncyd!!!', not sure what happened there!

tinkerbell21

Oh my, every time I try type your name out, it wont let me!

sillystudent_2

Get him to phone her up and say we are really struggling to pay this loan off, and want to speak to the bank to see if theres anything we can do about it, i.e. make the repayments less each month. Tell her that we need her to write a letter saying why she can only give us £100 a month, etc, so we could take it into the bank with us. That way we have it in writing.

Does that seem like a good plan? Or do you think she would spot the 'trick' straight away?

I suppose it's worth a try, but tbh I'm not too optimistic about how successful you'll be the bank won't care about what they perceive as "excuses" and will probably see it in the black-and-white idea of 'debt in his name, his responsibility.'

However, you could well have a case against his sister - I did A-level law and my dad's a solicitor, so I know a bit about this. Basically the law presumes that nobody gives something for nothing to someone else - so if your spouse paid for the car and gave it to his sister for nothing in return, the law would presume that your spouse gave it to his sister merely 'on trust,' essentially to look after. The fact that it's registered in her name is irrelevant.

This means that the car technically still belongs to your spouse - the fact that his sister's sold it makes things a bit more complicated, but he'd definitely have a case against her in a court of law. Unfortunately, as you said earlier, he doesn't want to do that, which I'm sorry to say somewhat limits your options.

Hope this has helped a bit at least! You have my sympathies - the sister sounds like a nasty piece of work! I'm pretty sure going to the bank will be a dead-end even with documentary evidence, especially given the sister is on benefits - why would they want to transfer some of the loan liability over to someone who has no proper income? On the other hand, I'm pretty sure you do have a reasonably good legal case against the sister, it's just a case of whether to pursue it or not.

Sorry I couldn't be more useful The way I see it you have 2 options - take the sister to court or pay the loan in full yourselves