I have had a long running battle with a secured loan lender. The loan was taken out in joint names by my husband and myself in 2004. It was defaulted on in late 2008 following the credit crunch. The property was repossessed and sold and in 2010, because my husband started asking questions about the loan, they stopped corresponding with him and the letters demanding repayment of the shortfall of £80,000 began to arrive only addressed to me.
As legal aid had been virtually wiped out and being unable to afford a solicitor to defend us, for the next 4 years I attended court case after court case and had to argue the issues we had regarding the debt. Whenever my husband asked anything in court, the claimant’s solicitor said that they did not have to reply as my husband was not a party to proceedings so I then had to repeat the question. Even the district judges asked, why it was a joint loan but only one of person was being pursued for the balance when both were at court, the bank’s solicitor simply said they did not want to pursue my husband and it was within their rights to pursue one or the other of us for the balance as we were jointly and severally liable for the entire debt. Despite our arguments the bank eventually won and got a CCJ against me in 2014.
I paid the CCJ for a few years until I defaulted when was made redundant around 2 years ago, about the same time my husband told me about debttactics.co.uk and said he thought they could help with our situation. I appointed them to act on my behalf and they did some digging and said that they believed our loan had been securitised in 2005 or 2006 and that since then our bank had not been the true party of interest but mealy the loan servicer. They politely asked the bank for all the securitisation information relating to who the loan had been sold to and said they believed that the CCJ had been awarded to the wrong party. I could tell by the bank’s replies that the person replying was on the defensive and trying to cover something up. Needless to say the last few letters have gone unanswered and the bank has gone silent. It’s crazy to think of all the sleepless nights and stressful days in court we had and in the end all it took to silence the bank was 4 letters.
Mary C
