Locating a borrower and claiming the debt.

MistressofCoin

I lend a friend several thousand pounds nearly six years ago via bank transfer. He promised to repay me a specific amount per month. I have the bank records and the text messages as evidence. He repaid me one payment then skipped town. I've recently found out via social media that he's back in town but I don't have his address.
What steps can I take to get the money back?  Will a collection agency be able to locate him? Can I go to small claims court without his address? 

[Deleted User]

You'll need his address for legal action.

A collection agency could potentially locate him, but only through the same steps that you could take for free. 

However, you're going to need to move quickly if the last contact was almost six years ago.

longjohnjohnson

If you have his old address then you can just serve the papers to this address. However you need to be very careful about throwing good money after bad.

You may win by default if the papers don't find their way to him, but collecting the debt is unlikely to be cheap, and once he finds out he may get the judgement set aside.  I'm not convinced that a judge is going to accept text messages as a proper loan agreement.

Ebe_Scrooge

Sadly this is all-too-familiar story, which is why the overriding advice is "never lend money to friends & family" - not much help to you in hindsight, I appreciate!

You could try small-claims, as long as it's less than £10K.  The main problem being, if he doesn't have the money, the court can't make him repay what he doesn't have.  Secondly, do you have have any evidence that this was a loan (I'm not doubting what you say, merely trying to pre-empt the questions you would be asked).  If you have some evidence that he agreed to "A loan of £xxx, to be repaid by monthly instalments of £y", you'll be on a stronger footing.

MistressofCoin

Deleted_User said:

You'll need his address for legal action.

A collection agency could potentially locate him, but only through the same steps that you could take for free. 

However, you're going to need to move quickly if the last contact was almost six years ago.

What steps could I take to find his address please?

sourcrates

MistressofCoin said:

Deleted_User said:

You'll need his address for legal action.

A collection agency could potentially locate him, but only through the same steps that you could take for free. 

However, you're going to need to move quickly if the last contact was almost six years ago.

What steps could I take to find his address please?

There are various online resources, Google is your friend here.

You can search the electoral role, again using the same search engine, then there are social media accounts, if they have an online presence, people post all kinds of personal information about themselves without giving it a second thought.

Then there are friends/family of the person concerned, there are many and varied ways to find someone.

However, as has been said, obtaining a judgement is just the first step in the dance, its a long way to go to actually get any money from him, he could just spin the court a line about having no money, so it would cost you more to ramp up the escalation options available to you, even a bailiff attending his home is no guarantee of payment, if they work, then an attachment to earnings may be a good bet, but will take time, and he could just skip his job and move on elsewhere, in which case the dance starts all over again.

For most enforcement steps you can take, he would be able to avoid them all quite easily, so unless he had an asset such as a property, you will be relying on his cooperation, which to date has not been that reliable has it.

longjohnjohnson

MistressofCoin said:

Deleted_User said:

You'll need his address for legal action.

A collection agency could potentially locate him, but only through the same steps that you could take for free. 

However, you're going to need to move quickly if the last contact was almost six years ago.

What steps could I take to find his address please?

Do you have any address for him?

You only need the last address you knew he lived at, not wherever he is living now.