Car Repossession Advice

bextas

Hi

I need some advise regarding car repossession. I have fallen behind on payments and am in arrears to the tune of £1000 – I have paid around half the agreement back so I can either pay the arrears and get back on track (not possible) or surrender the car voluntarily or the finance company would need to get a return of goods order. What is the process for this – we are due unpaid wages from my partners job and are currently in the process of taking court action to get these but this may take some time. Does the court just order the return of goods and they show up to take the car or do they write to me like with a ccj and I have to fill in a claim form and have 14 days to respond. I don’t want to loose the car as it gets both me and my partner to work but I think it would be better to hand it back voluntarily rather than face court action but then again court action may bide me more time. Any advise would be greatly appreciated

sleepyjones

My dad actually went through a similar thing last year, I think what happened with him is ... The lender will start the legal process and you'll get a letter from the court asking if you want to defend. You can then submit a Form 3A "Request to pay" and hand it in to the court, then lender will then (probably) reject this at which point it will go to court and you'll have a hearing.

If you do want to keep the car you need to come up with a plan that's affordable to you and propose it to the judge / sheriff (depending where you are) and they'll decide there and then if it's "just". When I was there with my dad we were in front of the Sheriff (in Scotland) for literally 5 minutes, she agreed that his proposal was acceptable and dismissed their case. Didn't go into reasons why the payments were missed or how affordable the proposal was, just agreed and he still has the car, he's is paying more than his initial payments though to repay the missed payments. He just worked out the amount of months left on the contract and divided the total amount still owing by the number of months so he's paying an extra £45 or something per month to ensure the end date of the contract remains the same.

The main thing though is to continue making payments now, if they won't accept them you can do it via bank transfer with your agreement reference number.

bextas

thank you so much for responding I really appreciate it

sleepyjones

Was just talking to my dad about this and it did happen pretty much as I said.

He did say at the court though they set a date 2 or 3 months later to return to the court for a follow up or something, we're not entirely sure what it was about but presumably it's just to make sure you keep up with the payments initially. About 2 days before that return court date he got a letter from their solicitors saying they'd dropped all claims so he didn't need to go back to court.

From initial contact from them you're looking at a couple of months to get a court date so you do have that time to think about what you want to do. If you go to court and lose though, you might have to return the car and pay the court costs, I don't know what these would be in ££s though and not even sure if this is the case but might be worth looking into).

Don't stress about going to court though, it's really not like what you see in (American) movies.

And if you're continuing to pay now, then they might actually agree to your Time to pay request so you might never need to go.

Should also mention "Form 3A" mentioned above is the Scottish Courts, I don't know what the equivelant would be in England / Wales if it's different.