In Oct 2009, my ex-husband signed a personal guarantee to cover an existing business overdraft of £140k for the right to borrow £60k more from NatWest which the bank knew was due to pay credit card demands. The overdraft was totally unsecured before that. His business had clearly been failing for some time and they pressurised him to secure their previously unsecured lending.
It was an extremely stupid decision on his part but we now know that he was succumbing to mental illness, from which he has never recovered. He broke down at the signing of the PG and was clearly in no fit state to make any decisions. I have copies of his emails to the bank saying that he considered that he had been co-erced into signing.
I am now losing my home to a bankruptcy trustee who cites this PG as the major debt and is forcing a sale of my home. I also lost my husband, of course.
Here is my question - the bank pre-prepared all the documentation including legal advice waiver and minutes of company meetings which didn't exist. They wrote the PG in our joint names. I was never told about it and was never advised to get legal advice etc. NatWest has admitted that they knew I would object to my home being formally taken as security. The place for my signature was struck through, although my name on the document was not erased, and the PG was processed.
Some days later, the bank bounced a payment to a major supplier which probably put the final nail in the coffin of the business. They apologised but the damage had been done. Apparently, several weeks later they signed new documents just in his name, but the PG was already underway by then.
I didn't know about the PG until June 2010, when it was too late, and I didn't know that the original PG had my name on it until a year later, when I found the paperwork. Can I contest the validity of the PG? Is what they have done strictly legal?