Mortgage repossession 1998

thehistorygirl · 18 February 2021 at 9:26PM

Back in 1998 my partner, now husband, had his house repossessed. It was jointly owned with his ex-partner who he’d split up with about 6 years before. He stayed in the house and took on the mortgage, but as there were arrears at the time the mortgage company (Bristol and West) wouldn’t take her name off. In 1998, due to combination of job losses and bad luck the house was repossessed with a shortfall in the mortgage of around £28k.

A few years went by, we got married, had a couple of kids and moved into a HA home. Then in 2001, the B&W finally got in touch and sent a demand for payment. We were on a low income at the time and couldn’t afford to pay a lump sum back to them so my husband entered into an agreement to pay £50 a month. As far as I am aware from paperwork the bank sent his ex-partner was also paying towards the shortfall but as he had no contact with her I have no idea how much. He paid his share every month for about 8 or 9 years as part of a DMP he was in at the time. This ended and he hasn’t paid anything to them now for probably around 10 years and we’ve heard nothing more from them at all.

We’ve recently come into some money from my critical illness claim and now have a sizeable lump sum to use for a deposit towards our own home again. My question is two fold. Will the repossession still show on his credit file? He won’t check it as he’s worried what might be on there, I’m of the opinion that it’s best to know these things and then deal with it. It’s possible that as his ex may well still be paying the arrears off every month, even though my husband has paid nothing. I’m very reluctant to contact the B&W as I fear this might reset the clock for him, but if she is still paying maybe the clock is still ticking anyway? For what it’s worth, we’re still at the same address so at any point the B&W could have got in touch again but haven’t.