Family loan gone sour - advice appreciated

lordmountararat

I have leaned from bitter experience never to lend money to family or friends unless you are able and prepared to write it off.

elsien

Anything that does get to court is going to be on the balance of probabilities. And the majority of people are not going to have the type of agreement  that a previous poster suggested. But if you’ve got a text or email clearly indicating it is a loan and you expect it to be paid back, and emails/texts showing anything that would indicate that they were paying back or were planning to pay back and how often, that might be enough to swing it. 

 Always going to be up to the judge on the day though.

sourcrates

Unfortunately your wife has no legal basis to pursue this debt, at her own admission, there was no agreement in place.

Even taking legal action doesn't guarantee a thing, you can have all the court judgements in the world, if they don`t want to pay or can`t pay, there is nothing you can do to force them.

A judgement only proclaims that the court has decided the debt is owed, if they won`t pay, then further enforcement action is necessary, options are -

bailiffs, who can be evaded by keeping doors locked,

an attachment to earnings, if they work, and if they stay employed,

and that`s it, for a £500 debt, all enforcement options can be evaded quite easily.

The softly, softly approach may have been a better starting choice, instead of a full blown threat of legal action.

_Penny_Dreadful

sourcrates said:

Unfortunately your wife has no legal basis to pursue this debt, at her own admission, there was no agreement in place.

The BIL has confirmed, in writing, that he owes the money.  IANAL but that sounds like a decent legal basis to me.  If there was nothing in writing then I agree it all becomes a bit he-said-she-said.

GrumpyDil

It's certainly arguable that you could satisfy the requirements to evidence that these were loans, particularly given the description of the most recent communication.

But for the amount of money involved I'd keep working on encouraging payment and if not forthcoming write it off. If you do take it to court and win, enforcing the judgment will be difficult and quite frankly not worth the effort. 

Ryan_Holden

We're all assuming that this person hasn't agreed to pay off the debt.

He has responded to a letter acknowledging that he owes the money which, to me, implies that he intends to repay it. 

I think you need to be polite and give him a chance, work out a payment plan with him.