Order to attend court for questioning

colukev

HI,

Hoping you could help.

We have an order to attend court for questioning.

This relates due to a dispute with our old landlord for £10k, relating to arrears (about 1.5k of this total amount), and the rest for damage/repairs.

Our old landlord has a legal degree and we are sure he has been scare mongering for the last year with some of his statements. We stupidly did not attend the hearing when he originally claimed, and the ccj was awarded.

We had a letter through to attend court for questioning, unfortunately we could not make it due to child care, and rang the court to let them know.

We have now recvd a 2nd court order which we can and will attend.

Me and my OH both work full time, but are pretty much living at a deficit due to our rent being £1600 per month. We live in a 4 bedroom house with one room converted into a study. We have 2 young children.

I had a relatively well paid job when we moved into our new property, however I was made redundant for the 3rd time in 18 months. I took a lower paid job which was more secure to give us a little bit of stability.

Our worry is that because we cannot afford to pay anything at this time, can they demand that we relocate to cheaper housing?

We have made an offer of £200 per month, which claimant has rejected. We know when we arrive at court there is insufficient disposable income to cover this amount, but claimant insists that court will take a dim view of how we got into this mess in the first place, and at the high rent we are paying. He tells us they can make us leave our house.

We understand that since ccj was awarded, that we must pay. We have accepted this and put forward the offer of £200 which we cannot afford but would find a way somehow.

My question is, we have tried to tell landlord that if he doesnt accept our £200 offer, then there will be a good chance court will rule that we do not have enough for them to make a payment plan order.
If we offer £200, will the court be ok with this as we cant realistically afford this without dropping an priority bill, or will they say that needs to be revisited if our circumstances change?

Can the court make us move to cheaper rented accommodation?

We know we have made mistakes and huge errors of judgements, which is why we have made an offer instead of just turning up to court to say we don!!!8217;t have any spare income to pay towards this debt.

Annoying thing is that if old landlord had accepted our offer of £200 a year ago, 1/5th of the debt would already be paid off.

We are really stressing out as we want to pay and get a solution in place, but landlord has refused all offers and is demanding 4k upfront with £400 per month. We have no assets apart from 2 x £500 cars (one of which has substantial damage due to an accident I had).

Sorry for what is probably a messy confusing post, but I have so much to say and so many worries I don!!!8217;t know where to start.

Please help, we have made some suicidal decsions, and its our own fault. But we want to somehow get a resolution so we can move forward.

Mojisola

colukev wrote: »

Annoying thing is that if old landlord had accepted our offer of £200 a year ago, 1/5th of the debt would already be paid off.

Have you been putting the £200 a month away so that you have a lump sum to offer the LL now?

colukev

We have not, purely because we cannot actually afford this. If they could accept our £200 per month offer, then we would find a way to pay somehow, but dropping another bill.

Not ideal, however the relationship we have with our landlord is toxic, and was even before we left the property.

I am due a promotion at work, and hope that within 6 months my wages will have risen enough to cover our £200 offer.

National_Debtline

Hi colukev and welcome to the forum.


If you can't afford £200 a month at present - as you imply above - then there is no point whatsoever in offering it. "Dropping another bill" is not a sound strategy as I'm sure you realise deep down. As obvious as it may sound, your payment offers need to be based on what you can afford after paying for essential living costs. If that figure turns out to be very little or nothing, so be it.


Making unsustainable offers will create more problems for you than it solves. Go to court, present your budget - as unattractive as it may look to the claimant - and let the judge do the rest.


It is not within this court's remit or powers to order that you move out of your current accommodation.


Please get some thorough debt advice from one of the free charity services. There is plenty of practical support available.


Dennis
@natdebtline

colukev

Hi Dennis,

thank you so much for your reply. I completely understand that it is not sensible to offer what we cannot afford, however the claimant is very aggressive, and along with his law degree , we are sure he is making false statements to pressure us into offering what we simply cannot afford.

We have had threatening messages from his son, which was partly the reason why we did not contest the original claim. Had we have done so, we know we would be liable for some costs, but certainly nowhere near the 10k.

We told the claimant that we would not tolerate threats and it could compromise his case. He simply said he cannot control what other people do, and that his son was rightly angry and let his emotions get the better of him.

We know we have been at fault for some of the debt, and we accept that. We had hoped that by offering even £200 which we cannot afford, then the court would see that we are trying to resolve.

So confused and nervous.

elsien

If you can't afford it then don't offer it. Regardless of what your landlord or his son says. If they get threatening then report them to the police.

Agreeing a higher payment and defaulting will look worse than being realistic about what you can give. The LL can try to pressure you all he likes, but the decision will be the courts and not his based on the budget that you present which includes all your essential outgoings.
If your circumstances change in the future and you get a better paid job then you can offer more. But do you really want to get behind with essentials such as gas, water etc which you can't do without just because your landlord is an !!!!?

Silver_Queen

Do NOT offer more than you can comfortably pay. You need to stand your ground. Realistically, what is the landlord going to do? Pay how much you can afford and no more. The Court will be the judge of how much you can afford. Present a realistic budget to them.

A law degree means nothing. Take that from someone who has a law degree. Just because he has a law degree, does NOT mean that he's smarter than you, nor does it mean he can bully and pressure you. If he threatens you again, go to the police.

colukev

I cannot tell you how much that has lifted me, thank you all.

We are behind on the majority of our utility bills and council tax too, we have set up payment plans for these.

The problem we have is that despite knowing that we can no longer afford to live in our house, we cannot move as the claimant is not going to give us a reference of course, and the ccj will fail any credit check are subject to.

If we can get this court date out the way, we can have a plan to move forward whatever the outcome. with the promotion on offer within 6 months, there is light at the end of the tunnel, but old landlord has turned us into quivering wrecks.

We were worried the courts would demand we leave the house and leave us homeless. claimant said that courts would force us to pay high costs as they would take a dim view on the whole situation.

I did tell him that by not accepting our £200 offer, then he is cutting his nose off to spite his face

National_Debtline

Hi again colukev


This isn't really about what you can or can't afford, is it - it's about having the confidence to stand by that offer and make no apologies for it. In that sense, I think it is actually a good thing for this to be looked at in court - if the claimant is silly enough to behave threateningly there, he will surely land himself in hot water.


You now need to focus on taking all the emotive, personal elements out of this and boiling it down to a set of figures on a piece of paper so that it becomes a transaction and a process, nothing more. I appreciate that is easy for me to say, but dwelling on notions of "fault" and any "anger" or "aggression" on the claimant's part is simply going to distract you from the important stuff. I'm sure you can count on this forum for plenty of support.


Dennis
@natdebtline

scd3scd4

He cant get blood from a turnip.

colukev

Dennis, the last year has been a living nightmare with countless harassing emails from him. That's not including to the drama's whilst we were still his tenants.

I have some big reservations about the hearing.

1) Claimant says he is going to grill us on the whole situation, not just our finances. I thought that's what the original claim hearing was for. He got awarded the CCJ so the details of how it got to this point are surely irrelevant? Claimant states that courts will be very harsh on us because of this.

2) Claimant insists that its not his fault that we are living in a house that we cannot afford. He also insists that the courts will not be happy about this and can insist we move.

3) we have missed so much from our income and expenditure form and are still running at a negative
rent
gas
Electric
council tax
water
childcare
road tax
car insurance x 2
fuel & parking
food/toiletries & cleaning products
Pet food £20
haircuts (£25
PAYG mobile top up £45
council tax debt
gas + electric debt

4) We have not paid all of our bills in the last 6 months, so he is saying they shouldn't be included on our expenditure form as we haven't been up to date with them anyway.

5) we are basing our costs and income jointly. If we have to fill out our separate forms based on our own income, and then split the outgoings down the middle, my OH will be significantly in the minus, but I would come into a positive as I get paid more than her. Are we entitled to base our info on joint (one pot) income and expenditure?