Final charging order & selling property - help please.

Mrsd_2

Thought I would venture over here for some help. I will try and give story in brief.
We're appx £70k in debt (but all in husband's name) Current status - charging order on house appx £30k, 1 x CCJ and 2 unsecured debts that are on hold whilst we deal with debt management company.

We have a property but it has little to none equity in it. I want to know if/how we can sell our house with the charging order in place. The house is starting to fall apart and getting to the point where it needs total refurbishment. We just cant afford to do it. Solution seems to be to sell up and move into rented.

I would like to know how the charging order will effect all this as we wont have equity in the house to pay it off. I hope this makes some kind of sense and someone can help me. Head just keeps going round in circles:eek: Have also just discovered husband has been paying 'debt management' company £70 a month when we could have been doing it ourselves. I just dont know where to go from here:(

Mrsd_2

Bump - anyone?

10past6

Where a CO is placed on a property, a creditor who obtained the CO can object to the property being sold if there are insufficient funds to clear the charge, under those circumstances it's for your solicitor deal with.

Should you be successful and sell, any CO placed on the property becomes obsolete making the debt once again an unsecured debt.

You should also print this off and hand it to your conveyancing solititor as most are not aware of it

fatbelly

Good link from 10past6! Please read the article carefully.

So is it a charge or a restriction? Have you checked? You can get a title register for your house from the Land Registry for £4.

Also - ditch the fee-charging debt managers. Use CCCS, CAB, Payplan or a d-i-y plan. If the house sale releases equity, consider full & final settlement deals for all your creditors.

Mrsd_2

Thanks you two, just came back to this today. Hubby is in the process of ditching clear debt/abacus. It's a final charging order, not sure of the difference between charge/restriction. There's barely any equity in the house so f&f wouldn't be an option. Thanks again for your help, much appreciated

fatbelly

Mrsd wrote: »

Thanks you two, just came back to this today. Hubby is in the process of ditching clear debt/abacus. It's a final charging order, not sure of the difference between charge/restriction.

You need to read that article that 10past6 linked to. It explains that although the court may make a charging order, the Land Registry register it as a restriction if the property is jointly owned and the debt is in one name only. This is from the article:

The effect of the restriction

The debtor and his joint owner’s freedom to sell the property is not affected by such a restriction. They could sell the property as if there was no charging
order against the debtor. All that was required was that the new buyers or
their solicitor write to the creditor informing them that they now owned
the property and then confirm to the Land Registry that they had given that
notice. Then the buyers could register the property with no further complications. The creditor, who is sitting back, waiting to get paid, instead just receives a letter confirming that a sale has already taken place, typically a week or two after the sale so there is little they can do to get the debt paid.

So that is why you need to do the £4 search that I linked to earlier and find out what is registered against your house. Hopefully you will find a restriction with the same standard wording as in the article.

RAS

See here as posted by 10past6. http://www.bllaw.co.uk/pdf/financeandrecoveries_0806_charging%20orders%20on%20property.pdf

if the house is in joint names, it may well be impossible for the creditor to enforce the CO.

Mrsd_2

Not checked land registry yet but the debt is def only in husbands name, as is the mortgage. Thanks again

RAS

Mrsd wrote: »

Not checked land registry yet but the debt is def only in husbands name, as is the mortgage. Thanks again

Does that mean that the house deeds are in your OH's name only?

fatbelly

Mrsd wrote: »

We have a property but it has little to none equity in it. I want to know if/how we can sell our house...

Sorry, I took that to mean the house was jointly owned