Selling a house with a secured loan on? advice needed please :(

vetnurse1

Hi,

I dont know if anyone can help me I am in serious need of some advice...

BASICALLY myself and my husband separated in May 2008...I found out last year that in Sep 2008 he forged my signature on a Welcome Finance loan for £22,000 - secured on our house.

Welcome Finance (WF) looked into this when I made a complaint last year and had my name removed from the loan - all well and good - but were not interested in prosecuting my ex because they were still receiving monthly payments on time (typical!)

The issue is now that I want to sell this house (both now living separately in other properties - our joint house is being rented out). There is about £20,0000 worth of equity - so essentially we should get £10,000 each.
HOWEVER because the Welcome Finance loan of £22,000 is still secured on the house, does that mean any equity will go straight to them and I wont see a penny??

I have called WF to question this, as surely as it has been proven that I never signed the loan document in the first place, this agreement is now null and void?? How can a loan be secured on MY house if I never agreed to it? WF will not discuss anything with me, as my name has been removed from the agreement!

I have also asked a solicitor, and a mortgage advisor - both of whom do not know where I stand. PLEASE if anyone can help I would be so, so grateful - I do not think it's fair to sell the house and I end up coming out with nothing, and yet my ex gets all of his debts paid off!

Thanks so much,
Louise

kingstreet

Hi Louise,

In my opinion (and despite the outcome of the complaint) Welcome loaned the money in good faith on the security of your home. In the event of the property being sold it would have as much right to its money back as your mortgage lender.

In fact, it would not release its second charge over the property without a solicitor's commitment to repay, so you'd be unable to sell the property without that.

In a perverse way, you might be better off allowing the mortgage to fall into arrears and having the property repossessed. The mortgage lender would get its money first, leaving Welcome to get the scraps from whatever equity remains. If any debt is left owing to Welcome it would be able only to pursue your former partner as you are no longer party to the agreement.

I think this would be a destructive course affecting your ability to get credit for years to come so I'd not recommend it to you.

Unfortunately, it is what is legal in this situation rather than what is fair. I can't see an obvious solution to this which wouldn't involve lengthy and costly legal action involving a specialist solicitor.

HTH

Ian

*I'd be interested in the views of the forum solicitors on this*

Richard_Webster

Yes, i agree with Kingstreet's thoughts - the legal costs of proving it is a forgery could be considerable.

The legal charge document must have had a witness to your alleged signature.

Is the witness anyone you can contact to get a statement that they did not witness your signature? If they are prpeared ot put in wirting that they only witnessed his signature then posisbly Welcome might have second thoughts and agree that their loan is unsecured and have the charge removed from the Land Register.

After all, they should have taken approrpriate steps to check your signature etc and your ID before lending money allegedly to both of you.

DVardysShadow

Richard_Webster wrote: »

Yes, i agree with Kingstreet's thoughts - the legal costs of proving it is a forgery could be considerable.

The legal charge document must have had a witness to your alleged signature.

Is the witness anyone you can contact to get a statement that they did not witness your signature? If they are prpeared ot put in wirting that they only witnessed his signature then posisbly Welcome might have second thoughts and agree that their loan is unsecured and have the charge removed from the Land Register.

After all, they should have taken approrpriate steps to check your signature etc and your ID before lending money allegedly to both of you.

Slap the witness with a lawsuit for OP's losses. Watch witness declare it a forgery?

This thread is a crosspost https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3498679

vetnurse1, it is bad form to crosspost the same problem on several forums, because it wastes peoples time to give an answer if that answer was given in the other thread. If you can't resist the urge to crosspost, at least edit your opening post to say what you have done.

Richard_Webster

Slap the witness with a lawsuit for OP's losses. Watch witness declare it a forgery?

I agree - this probably won't work if witness knew about second signature - but if witness only witnessed first signature (and there was a a single signature clause for two signatures - very common on this kind of document) then witness might have witnessed and forgery took place later.

However, as you imply, if witness big mate of ex then unlikely to be very helpful!

Errata

Surely Welcome finance can't put a charge on a property based on a forged document? Doesn't the forgery make the original loan document void?

zacattack_2

Maybe I am missing something here but this is fraud so surely the document isn't worth the paper it is written on? The lender cannot have a charge over the house without the permission of both parties and they did not get yours so they need to chase your ex-partner for the money and notify the Police of the alleged fraud.