Guarantor - Help

CD86

First of all, sorry if this is in the wrong place - not 100% sure where it should go.

I, stupidly, agreed to be a guarantor on my now ex boyfriends loan a few years ago, with interest rates through the roof - I know I know, I shouldn't have done it but we had been together 5 years at the time and it was only supposed to be a 6 month thing as he was due a bonus which he would use to pay it off, but he ended up blowing the bonus, then just over a year later we broke up! He continued paying it until he lost his job middle of 2012 (due to being lazy and not getting up for work repeatedly and ultimately being sacked)
He ignored my calls and emails most of the time and also ignored the lenders calls and emails knowing it would all fall on me in the end! He paid me in cash here and there but it got to the point where he just point blank refused to acknowledge it as his responsibility! I ended up paying the thing off out of my savings as it was ruining my credit rating with the late payments and I couldn't afford the monthly payments much longer!

Is there anything I can do to get this money back? I would write it off as a lesson learned but it was £1.5k which is a big chunk of my savings!

Hope someone can help me and not just give me hassle for doing it in the first place like my family.

Thanks

Thrugelmir

Is he in now in a job?

somethingcorporate

Any paper trail confirming it is a loan and not a gift?

Lucky it's only £1.5k and not ten times as much but you'll find it difficult to get back.

CD86

I have no idea, I don't see or speak to him as he refuses to communicate at all.

CD86

somethingcorporate wrote: »

Any paper trail confirming it is a loan and not a gift?

Lucky it's only £1.5k and not ten times as much but you'll find it difficult to get back.

Yes there is a paper trail confirming this, after the break up we only communicated via email and the loan was brought up many times with him claiming he would make his payment the following day but I'd then receive calls from the lender saying no payment had ever been made.

UnderPressure

I am not 100% on this but am sure someone will be along soon who is, you have all the relevant paper work and proof, along with presumably receipts so I cannot think of any reason why you could not take him to court to reclaim the money from him, as far as I know it costs around £50ish to do then if you get judgement in your favour he will be ordered to pay by the court and a CCJ recorded against his name.

If he does not pay a charge can be added to any property he owns, or in some case and attachment to his earning or even sending in the bailiffs to collect.

A word of caution though, if he truly has nothing you could end up with a court order where he has to pay you £5 a month or some other kind of token payment, same with bailiffs, if he has nothing of any value then there is nothing to seize.

I think that is right keep an eye out I am sure someone will correct me if this is wrong.

Merry Christmas

Tixy

Hi

It sounds like there is little chance that you could successfully take him to court to require him to repay. That is assuming you didn't have a written agreement with him that he would repay you in the event that you were required to repay the loan as guarantor.

However perhaps you might think it worth writing to him formally to set out the outstanding balance and ask him to repay you in full or contact you to arrange a suitable repayment plan and that failure to do so may result in you taking further action. Knowing him, do you think that is likely to worry him/scare him in to repaying you?

EDIT - sorry last couple of posts appeared whilst I way typing, the paper trail is presumably relating to the loan from the loan company? Really you need to have separate paperwork/correspondance to state he would repay you if you had to make payments on the loan from the loan company.
You may have a shot at being successful if you try legal action, it costs around £80 I think - I guess you need to weigh up whether its worth throwing more money at this, and whether he is likely to pay you even if you did obtain a CCJ. If he doesn't then to try to enforce it would cost you more and if he isn't working and doesn't have any money to pay you then it could be eventually be throwing more money away.

CD86

UnderPressure wrote: »

I am not 100% on this but am sure someone will be along soon who is, you have all the relevant paper work and proof, along with presumably receipts so I cannot think of any reason why you could not take him to court to reclaim the money from him, as far as I know it costs around £50ish to do then if you get judgement in your favour he will be ordered to pay by the court and a CCJ recorded against his name.

If he does not pay a charge can be added to any property he owns, or in some case and attachment to his earning or even sending in the bailiffs to collect.

A word of caution though, if he truly has nothing you could end up with a court order where he has to pay you £5 a month or some other kind of token payment, same with bailiffs, if he has nothing of any value then there is nothing to seize.

I think that is right keep an eye out I am sure someone will correct me if this is wrong.

Merry Christmas

He has no properties, but he does have a lot of electronic equipment such as decks and Apple products - which he purchased instead of making his loan payments. I also have proof of these purchases as he stupidly put things on facebook and would tell me in emails.
Would this count?

Thank you all for your responses

CD86

Tixy wrote: »

Hi

It sounds like there is little chance that you could successfully take him to court to require him to repay. That is assuming you didn't have a written agreement with him that he would repay you in the event that you were required to repay the loan as guarantor.

However perhaps you might think it worth writing to him formally to set out the outstanding balance and ask him to repay you in full or contact you to arrange a suitable repayment plan and that failure to do so may result in you taking further action. Knowing him, do you think that is likely to worry him/scare him in to repaying you?

I have tried this, he just ignored it. It didn't worry/scare him at all. I even contacted his mum to see if she could talk some sense into him but she wasn't any help either.

spacey2012

A guarantor contract cancels out his legal liabilities.
Your guarantor contract = your loan.
They just give the money to someone else.
The full legal liability for the loan is yours.

Tixy

CD86 wrote: »

He has no properties, but he does have a lot of electronic equipment such as decks and Apple products - which he purchased instead of making his loan payments. I also have proof of these purchases as he stupidly put things on facebook and would tell me in emails.
Would this count?

Thank you all for your responses

If you were successful in obtaining a CCJ and if he didn't make an arrangement to pay that was satisfactory to the court then in theory you could instruct bailiffs to try to recover this electronic equipment. But if he won't let them in to his house then they won't be able to recover anything. And even if they do recover these goods by the time they are sold on second hand and the bailiffs have deducted their fees from the proceeds then you may see very little towards the debt.

If he was employed and you were successful in obtaining a CCJ then you may have better luck trying an attachment of earnings - but you need to know where he is working, and you would only receive an amount each week/month whilstever he remained in the job. If he can't manage to keep a job through laziness then this may not be a practical solution either.