legal aid recovery service never herd from them for 10 years

kev247

Hi im new to forums so am hoping i posted this in the correct forum

I am posting this on behalf on my partner, i will try keep as brief as possible.

In July 2007 as part of her divorce settlement she was awarded the family home.
As she didn't have income at the time, due to being a full time mum with 3 children(1 in further education, 1 in Secondary school and 1 in primary school), she was aware that a charge would be put against the property for the legal aid fees incurred (£8750.00).
Without going into details this was not an amicable divorce, it was contested by her ex who wanted the house sold with profits divided. So it was after a fight that the court award her the house, and nothing else or future claims on pensions etc.
It was always her understanding that this charge would have to payed from the sale of the property or should her circumstances change allowing her to to repay the charge.

In May of 2017 she received a letter from the Legal aid Agency (this was the first contact from them for nearly 10 years) saying that she now owed £14.230.31.
To say she was shocked doesn't really cover it! Upon contacting them to query this she was told that interest had been added at a rate of 8% and that the amount was correct, she asked why nobody had told her about the interest being added, and would been able to decide whether to at least make payments against the interest? The legal Aid Agency said they would look into this and get back to her.
!!
In November of 2017 she received from the legal aid agency, copies of an Admin1/interest agreement signed and dated by her (July 2007) and a completion of registration from land registry Peterborough office, having looked through her paperwork from that time, and to best of her knowledge this is first time she has seen copies of either of these documents. although there is no doubt that she signed the admin agreement although at the time she suffering intense metal stress, and was more concerned with keeping a stable home/school life for the children rather than than having to sell the house. and move home.

Again without going into to much detail, my partner suffered the lost of her son in early 2018, so as you can imagine this matter was put on hold for a while.

While we not looking too have the charge wiped, we feel the interest charge is unfair both in terms of lack of correspondence and the rate which is 8% given for most of the period in question the bank of England base rate has been 0.5%!!

I guess my questions are as follows

Has any one else suffered a similar experience?

Is there any way of the interest charged between 2007 and 2017 being wiped, reduced or a way of appealing this, given that there was no correspondence from the legal aid recovery service between those dates?

Any advise/thoughts would be most welcome

thank you in advance


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