Direct Debits Taken After Death

antrobus

Olive123 wrote: »

Hi Thrugelmir
One of the services was insurance. The direct debit for about £1000 was taken after the death, for the coming year's insurance, but the insurance was invalid even before the direct debit was taken because the property was unoccupied, because of the death.
Another was for gym membership, it had already not been used for several years before death, about £700 was taken by direct debit after death, but this could not be used by anyone other than the deceased.
Another was for car insurance, but the deceased was unable to drive, had no car and no license for a period of time before death.
There were other direct debits taken for other things, but I would have to write an essay to cover them all.

So, in other words, the actual death of the indvidual concerned has no bearing on the matter; they were already paying for services that weren't being used. As I said before, I don't believe that, as a matter of law, failure to use a contracted service gives rise to any right to retrospectively void the contract concerned.

You appear to be in the situation of having to deal with the affairs of a reasonably disorganised 'family member' who even managed to ensure that the papers detailing their financial affairs were unavailable for some time. I don't think that particular omission can be laid at the door of the companies concerned. You can ask them nicely for a refund in the circumstances, but if they decline, I would simply move on with life.

eskbanker

Olive123 wrote: »

Hi Thrugelmir
One of the services was insurance. The direct debit for about £1000 was taken after the death, for the coming year's insurance, but the insurance was invalid even before the direct debit was taken because the property was unoccupied, because of the death.
Another was for gym membership, it had already not been used for several years before death, about £700 was taken by direct debit after death, but this could not be used by anyone other than the deceased.
Another was for car insurance, but the deceased was unable to drive, had no car and no license for a period of time before death.
There were other direct debits taken for other things, but I would have to write an essay to cover them all.

I'm no expert in contract law but would see these as each being slightly different scenarios?:

Property insurance - although most policies would indeed have exclusions restricting cover when unoccupied, the death of the usual occupant presumably doesn't intrinsically make the policy invalid, e.g. if someone else such as a family member was to occupy it temporarily. Shouldn't the property continue to be insured until disposal, albeit presumably requiring adjustment to reflect lack of occupancy?

Gym membership - these are notoriously uncancellable but this sounds worthy of further escalation through their complaints procedure, etc.

Car insurance - it's not obvious why someone would pay car insurance if they can't drive and don't have a car! Did the supplier take advantage of your relative in some way perhaps?

I don't wish to be argumentative, especially at a time like this, but just looking at this from another perspective....

alanq

eskbanker wrote: »

Car insurance - it's not obvious why someone would pay car insurance if they can't drive and don't have a car! Did the supplier take advantage of your relative in some way perhaps?

It may not always have been the case that they did not have a car and were unable to drive. I assume that circumstances changed but the insurance company was not informed and so continued to take payments.

antrobus

eskbanker wrote: »

....Property insurance - although most policies would indeed have exclusions restricting cover when unoccupied, the death of the usual occupant presumably doesn't intrinsically make the policy invalid, e.g. if someone else such as a family member was to occupy it temporarily. Shouldn't the property continue to be insured until disposal, albeit presumably requiring adjustment to reflect lack of occupancy?.......

As far as that particular issue is concerned, I think it depends on the exact details of the insurance cover. From practical experience, I know that a lot of household insurers simply have clauses that up the excesses for certain things and exclude liability for others when the property qualifies as uncoccupied.