still being chased

tetley

hi ,the bradford and bingley are still pursuing my friend nearly 7 years after the house was repossessed ,there was a shortfall of £16,000 when the house was sold.they then accepted a lump sum payment of £1000 of my friends ex-partner,he was disabled and will never work again.
they then started to chase my friend for the outstanding balance of £15,000.she has challenged this on many occasions,offering to pay a lump sum also of £1000,but they are having none of it.
they are now threatening court proceedings and have sent her a income and expenditure questionnaire.this cycle seems to happen every 2 years.the solicitor who was dealing with her case has since retired and all the files seem to have been lost.so she will have to start again with a new solicitor,how can she bring this to a close without paying the full amount,which she cant afford.if they accepted a full and final figure of £1000 of her ex partner why wont they accept this of her ?.she does work but only earns the minimum wage.

kazd

My sister had the same problem except whilst living in the house she built up a backlog of mortgage arrears, with interest and more interest this ended up being £32k. Originally when they first sold the house, her partner refused to take a 2k drop, so the sale was lost. IS were paying a small part of the interest but she still ended up with this massive debt. The Halifax refused to say whether they were in touch with her partner and chased her for the money. Eventually the house was sold and so was the debt, the debt company agreed a payment with her and she filled out the forms, however, she omitted to put any references on there so the money she was paying was sent to a suspense account. Prior to finding this out they agreed to take a full and final settlement from her of £3k, she said that she would need a few months to save it by moving back in with my parents. The debt company said they would test the water with the offer, two weeks later she had a letter excepting the offer and giving her just two weeks to pay it.

Luckily we were able to lend her the money, which she has since repaid. I did attempt to get the money back from the suspense account as they had agreed this figure prior to us finding about the mistake in the suspense account but no joy.

tetley

thanks kazd, has anybody else had dealings on this matter,i would very much like to find a way out ?

Froggitt

Sorry in advance for my post, but Im not sure why people seem to think they can just walk away from mortgage arrears.

Anyway, being a bit more helpful, surely the income/expenditure questionnaire will show that she cannot afford any repayments, and the B&B in all likliehood will try to settle to get something, rather than nothing. They will attempt to extract as much of the debt from each party as they think each party can afford.

If she's on minimum wage, she may be entitled to Legal Aid (if it still exists these days).

Both parties to a mortgage are liable for the others debt as far as I know.

Bankrupcy is the other solution......its not such a bad option these days (depending on circumstances).