Why can a debt last forever and u can only claim back for 6 years?

johnhope

Why can you owe a company a sum of money ie £150 for as long as it takes for them to get it and people can only claim back money from companies such as banks for only 6 years? :rolleyes:

Kaz2904

After 6 years any debt that someone has not tried to collect or made no contact with the debtor about becomes statute barred.
So if someone turned up on your doorstep and said
"You had a credit card with £250 on it and stopped paying it July 2001. We want the money"
will have to whistle for it I'm afraid as it is more than 6 years since there has been any contact about the debt.

Milarky

They are two separate issues

In the case of repaying a loan it should take as long as it takes. The existence of the loan isn't in question, and the regular payments made by the borrower to the lender made are an acknowledgment of the contractual relationship.

In the case of a legal claim for costs, damages etc (eg 'bank charges') the claimant who pipes up one day and and decides that they've been illegally charged all along and then contacts the offending organisation about it, is only seeking to have the situation (i.e. their claim they were overcharged illegally) 'acknowledged' for the first time. You can recover or challenge any future costs once the claim is staked, but the law sets a limit of six years that you can act retrospectively on a claim. Many people claiming overcharging won't even have a six-year relationship with their bank - so the entire period of that relationship is actionable. But the line is drawn at six years for practical purposes - and also because it is a tad unfair if you can be taken to court for sometime that happened, say, twenty five years ago. The six years limit also limits the number of cases that need to be heard in court -otherwise there would be longer and longer delays for all cases to be heard - and the saying that ''justice delayed is justice denied'' would apply too.