CCJ I was never notified about

CYL

First post here, so bear with me. I'm not even sure if this is the right forum for this!

I recently had a credit report done, and I have found out that I have a CCJ from Canterbury court about some credit card debt (EGG card, to be accurate) I got into about 3 or 4 years ago. The CCJ was issued at the start of 2010, for just over £1,200

The problem is, I was never notified about any of this. I knew I had the debt, and I was paying it off (in fact I thought I had paid it off). We moved from the address the CCJ is attached to in early 2009, and we had mail forwarding in place for about 6 months, but I have never received any information from Canterbury Court, or the credit card company since we moved.

Is there anything I can do about this to improve my credit score? How could I have prevented this from affecting my score? How was I supposed to pay a judgement off in under a month if I didn't even know it was made?

Hax

CYL wrote: »

How was I supposed to pay a judgement off in under a month if I didn't even know it was made?

Not sure about what you can do about the CCJ - settling it would be a good idea - I think you may be able to apply for a re-determination and represent yourself and your case and possibly get a "reasonable" repayment plan put in place. Although I believe that will cost you with it being so late after the original case.

However, I think that you have answered the above question when you said:

CYL wrote: »

in fact I thought I had paid it off

CYL wrote: »

We moved from the address the CCJ is attached to in early 2009

Thinking you have paid a debt off isn't the same as "knowing" you have. Also, it is your responsibility to notify creditors when you move. If you don't, then I don't believe that there is any obligation for them to track you down when trying to send notices about CCJs/defaults/etc.

I think that they satisfy their obligations by simply writing to you at the last address that they have on record for you. For all they know, you have received the letters and have chosen to ignore them - that's quite common where debt is concerned.

zppp

OP, you had better contact the court, as they deliver the documents directly to serve a CCJ as far as I'm aware.

Quentin

If you weren't aware of the court proceedings, then the ccj will have been awarded by your "default" - ie as you didn't respond to the court's documents notifying you of the proceedings the claimant "won" the case without there having to be a hearing.

But in circumstances like this you can apply to the court to get the ccj "set aside" (on the grounds you were unaware the proceedings were taking place). Once set aside it will be as if the judgement never existed and will be removed from the records.

The claimant will have to start proceedings against you anew, when you can either defend the claim or pay it up promptly. If you pay promptly then that would be the end of the claim, and no CCJ would be registered against you.

If you don't go through the "set aside" procedure and simply now pay off the amount you owe, then the original CCJ will remain on the record, and continue to blacken your record even though you will have paid it.

Tixy

If a creditor decides to start court proceedings then they only have to send the court paperwork to the last known address, it is only sent by 'normal' post not registered delivery or anything. So as you didn't tell them, your new address the paperwork will have gone to the old address.

Usually if you were unaware of the court proceedings because you hadn't informed the creditor of your new address this will not be sufficent grounds to get the CCJ set aside.

A setaside application may be successful if you could prove to the judge that you had a good reason to believe that the debt was fully paid up and that is why you didn't tell the creditor your address (eg if you had a statement or letter to show a nil balance or something), not just a belief that the debt had been paid.

You could look at this factsheet about trying to get a CCJ set aside to determine if you might have a case for any other reason - http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/england_wales/factsheet.php?page=12_how_to_set_aside_a_judgment_in_the_county_court#chapter3
aside from that all you can do is pay off the CCJ and get a notice of satisfcation to update your credit file and the registery trust. And accept that your file will be badly affected until 2016.

CYL

I understand that they only sent notices about it through the post, my problem is that we had mail forwarding from our old address for at least 6 months after we moved, and I never received a notice, or it would hav been sorted out before it went to court!

CHR15

I had one Set Aside a few years ago.

A Solicitor I had working for me sent an invoice to my old address (he had on record my date of moving out).

First I knew about it was a letter from my payroll withholding some of my salary for "fine payment" or something similar.

I firstly paid the invoice, then took it to court (solicitor in question failed to turn up).
Judge took about 4 minutes listening to my story then simply set it aside, all struck off, never existed.

I then sacked my Solicitor after a few choice words.