Any right to request a record of payments made?

drjones69

Good afternoon all,

Hopefully this a straightforward question ;-)

I've recently paid off a large debt on behalf of my mother, over the past 4 years, to be as clear as I can be - the payments were made between myself and Irwin Mitchell solicitors, but were then paid out by IM against an RBS debt in my mother's name.

After completing the final payment, I thought it prudent to request a full record of the payments which I had made to IM. They have refused, and are asking a letter from my mother to authorise me to see this. It's not impossible to get this, although I'm keen to isolate my mum from any further contact over the debt as it causes her considerable anxiety. IM were issued with a letter of consent from my mum several years ago when I started making the payments (they have since, apparently, lost this - although they won't put that in an email - I tell them they've had one, sometime late I get another email telling me I need to send one), and to be entirely honest I'm frustrated with being constantly ground under foot by everyone else in this matter, in fact I'm sick of always being made to feel like a criminal begging for crumbs of information.

Whilst I will get my mum to write up a new letter of consent if unavoidable, I'm interested in knowing what (if any) legal rights and protections I have in this situation.

My questions are thus,
1) Do IM have a legal responsibility/obligation to provide me with a receipt for the payments I have made to them? If so under which act is this required?

Regards,
Ryan

EssexHebridean

From the Solicitor's perspective, it depends in part what the authorisation your mother provided them with was - if she authorised them to deal entirely with you on this, that should cover your current request, however, if she authorised them to speak/deal with you with regard to the payments to be made, then it may be that IM are seeing that as insufficient to allow them to discuss the matter as a whole with you. The difficultly is that in spite of the fact that you have been making payments, you are not their client.

If you feel that the letter of consent should be adequate, then I suggest this:
- Put in writing to them that they have had the letter of consent already and it will be on their file - point out that they MUST have this on file as they have been dealing with you.
- If they come back again and tell your mother needs to provide a letter of consent, simply respond asking for the name of the supervising Partner for your mother's file. There will be one.
- escalate to the Supervising Partner (if the letter has indeed been lost off the file then simply the threat of you doing this may get things moving for you in any event.

National_Debtline

Hi Ryan,


I think there are some good points in the post above. Just to add a little more, about the previous consent letter your mother sent, if it didn't give sufficient authorisation for what you are requesting now, IM must ensure to follow Data Protection about passing information onto a third party. I appreciate your frustration if they have 'lost' the previous letter and that you have made payments to this debt. However, anyone can make payments to anyone else's debts, this wouldn't necessarily give them permission to request details like a breakdown.


Alternatively, if you don't want to ask your mother for another authority letter, you could just ask for a letter of confirmation from IM that the debt is now settled and there is a zero balance on the account. I think this should be sufficient for your files for the future, just in case any other company ever tried to claim money was owed (you should keep that for the next 6 years).


Bear in mind, you have done the hard part and cleared the debt, which hopefully is a big weight off everyone's mind. This is now a case of dotting the 'i's' and crossing the 't's'.


Laura
@natdebtline