Legal aid from 25 years ago

patgc

My friend divorced her husband 25 years ago using a solicitor financed with Legal Aid. The family house was signed over to her in lieu of maintenence, and she took over the mortgage and paid it herself. She has never remarried and her mortgage has just finished and on the copy of the Land Registry title it has just her name as absolute title. She is worried that she has to pay back her Legal Aid if she should sell the house. Surely the title deed would have a charge on it for these costs ?

zzzLazyDaisy

It certainly used to be the case that the legal aid board took a charge over the property for the legal aid bill, if it wasn't paid at the end of the proceedings. The interest rate was quite steep and meant that the debt doubled every 12 years, if I remember correctly. But the charge would not be on the title register, it would be on the charges register.

Land_Registry

patgc - as zzzLazyDaisy says such charges will often appear in the Charges Register. If it was a very old one then it may have been protected in another way.

It might be worth dropping us an email or rining us using the Contact Us details on our website to ask the question as to whether a legal aid charge was ever registered and if so when was it removed. You would need to quote the address/title number for the property.

We should be able to advise and explain how to get a copy of the register/charge as appropriate - you may not need a copy though as by confirming there was one may be sufficient to at least confirm it has now gone?

NAR

Could it be that all costs were awarded against the husband?

zzzLazyDaisy

NAR wrote: »

Could it be that all costs were awarded against the husband?

It could be. If that is the case, this would be stipulated in the consent order, if OP's friend still has a copy of that.

But it was very common back then for the legal aid board to pay the (in this case) wife's legal bill and to recover that money, plus interest, from the net proceeds of sale on the subsequent sale of the property which had been put at issue in the divorce proceedings. So I would suggest that the first thing to do is to follow the very helpful advice of Land Registry Representative, and make absolutely certain, one way or the other.

Just as an aside, however - if your friend is happy where she is and has no plans to move, in a way it won't make a lot of practical difference to her. There will be no pressure on her to sell up, or to pay off the debt. If she chooses to stay in the house for the rest of her life, it will be someone else's problem when she's gone.

patgc

Am now in contact with Land Registry who are going to look into it. Friend says that as far as she knows nothing was said about costs being awarded to husband.

patgc

Land Reg has been a big help and all is soerted now. Many thanks everyone

zzzLazyDaisy

Thanks for coming back to let us know.

Dx