true or false?

[skonk]

I hope this is the right place! Just a little rumour I heard a few years ago, and always wondered if it was true, and what better place to find out!! Someone told me that you could sell all your possessions to your partner/friend/whatever for a penny, as long as you had a receipt.

 

Someone told me this a long time ago, and I'm not sure if it was one of those urban myths. They told me that the person in question had sold everything to their girlfriend and when bailiffs knocked, they couldn't take anything as it wasn't legally his any more?

 

Anyone?

[Conniff]

I think it's a myth. You can do it in normal circumstances, but I believe it can't be done for avoidance, or was that just for taxes?

 

Mind you, if it's for bailiffs and they have not levied then they don't know what is yours and what is not, but if you own the house and live there, I would think it reasonable to believe all the furnishings were yours as well.

[bazak1]

As conniff states, bailiffs ask for receipts, but by just showing them "a" receipt, there aren't normally names and addresses on them unless they are large items where the invoice and delivery note are one and the same.

The onus is on you to prove they are yours.

[skonk]

I also would've thought that bailiffs would assume items in your house belonged to you, as you live there. It was just something I've wondered for a while, and see if there was any proof in what my mate said. By the way, I've not got bailiffs coming!! Just thought I'd add that!

[godpikachu]

lol, if you dont manage to sell your stuff to a friend, you could always arrange for it to mysteriously disappear a couple of days before the bailiff visit.

 

besides, wouldnt bailiffs come first to total up the vlaue of stuff before they come to take it?, i know the council did once a few years ago when they were obsessed with us paying them back some coucil tax that we didnt owe them, said they were gonna take our TV, my mum said they were welcome to it cos it as a piece of **** and we were getting a new one anyways, lol....i hate the council.

[rambo]

I listed everything in my flat and sold it to my sister for £500(I think).

Made a list of EVERYTHING and my sister signed the reciept.

 

IF bailiffs ever managed to get in my flat, show them the reciept and end of bailiff trying to take my stuff.

[bottomburp]

You can give anything to anyone. You don't need to have a receipt (though any paperwork confirming gifts, sales, bequests etc are, IMHO, a Good Thing as it can help to avoid future problems).

 

BUT if it's done to avoid creditors then it has to be done some time [3 years?] before.

 

If it's done less than [3 years] before then the creditors can claim the assets. And if the assets are sold - for less than fair market value - less than [3 years] before then the creditors can claim the assets. BECAUSE both ways are assumed to be avoidance schemes.

 

I put [3 years] because though I think it is 3 years I'm not totally sure...

[Conniff]

You can give anything to anyone. You don't need to have a receipt (though any paperwork confirming gifts, sales, bequests etc are, IMHO, a Good Thing as it can help to avoid future problems).

 

BUT if it's done to avoid creditors then it has to be done some time [3 years?] before.

 

If it's done less than [3 years] before then the creditors can claim the assets. And if the assets are sold - for less than fair market value - less than [3 years] before then the creditors can claim the assets. BECAUSE both ways are assumed to be avoidance schemes.

 

I put [3 years] because though I think it is 3 years I'm not totally sure...

 

Something wrong with that.

 

Senario - 2 years ago I sold all my stuff and now only have a deckchair and a beat up radio. I used the receipts from the sale to buy beans, so what assets can they take?

[Gilbert_O'Sullivan]

I hope this is the right place! Just a little rumour I heard a few years ago, and always wondered if it was true, and what better place to find out!! Someone told me that you could sell all your possessions to your partner/friend/whatever for a penny, as long as you had a receipt.

 

Someone told me this a long time ago, and I'm not sure if it was one of those urban myths. They told me that the person in question had sold everything to their girlfriend and when bailiffs knocked, they couldn't take anything as it wasn't legally his any more?

 

Anyone?

 

 

Wind up merchant.

 

Be wary if that someone also says to you can you fetch them a bucket of steam!

[bottomburp]

Something wrong with that.

 

Senario - 2 years ago I sold all my stuff and now only have a deckchair and a beat up radio. I used the receipts from the sale to buy beans, so what assets can they take?

 

If you were to go bankrupt you have to disclose these disposals, tell them [the Official Receiver] where they've gone and the OR will try to get them back by hook or by crook and anyone else in the chain is in trouble too. Generally it narrows down to friends and/or family. OH tells me that it's actually 5 years (so I was wrong thinking it was 3).

[skonk]

 

Wind up merchant.

 

Be wary if that someone also says to you can you fetch them a bucket of steam!

 

That, and a skirting board ladder!!

[bazak1]

watch out for the " sky hook" as well as being sent for a long weight.

Skonk, i see you are in Anfield. Are you one of us Liverpool fans or do you wear the blue and white shirt of Everton, or not into football at all.

Edited January 31, 2009 by bazak1

[Gilbert_O'Sullivan]

That, and a skirting board ladder!!

 

[skonk]

watch out for the " sky hook" as well as being sent for a long weight.

Skonk, i see you are in Anfield. Are you one of us Liverpool fans or do you where the blue and white shirt of Everton, or not into football at all.

 

I, sir, wear the red shirt! Loyal follower and tattooed liverbird wearer is me!! I think Rafa could use some legal advice from this site to get him out of his contract!!

[caledfwlch]

To my knowledge, you can sell your stuff of for a penny even with the Bailiff banging on your door. He has no claim on or official knowledge of anything you own until he has made peaceful entry and levied.

 

Its bankruptcy, and (i think) when rent arrears are owed that this neat trick does not work.

 

I shouldnt think a county court judge overseeing a Ctax liability order or CCJ would even have the legal mechanisms to deal with it. Creditor would have to make you bankrupt and then get the IP to reverse the sale which given the value of household goods, means they would simply revert back to your ownership, and youd be 2p down.

 

SD's seem to be a wonderful and exciting tool to basically negate a bailiff's only power and ammunition before he even turns up. And they should be used more.

 

If 4 out of every 5 addresses a bailiff calls on can provide an SD, then they are going to soon be entering their own credit crunch problems!

[Gilbert_O'Sullivan]

To my knowledge, you can sell your stuff of for a penny even with the Bailiff banging on your door. He has no claim on or official knowledge of anything you own until he has made peaceful entry and levied.

 

Its bankruptcy, and (i think) when rent arrears are owed that this neat trick does not work.

 

I think you will find that just by saying bailiff in your description above is quite misleading. Put it this way, if a court bailiff is called to your home and he is intent on gaining entry by peaceful means then he bloody well will and the excuse of selling things for a quid or two will be laughed at. And depending on the debt could be a serious issue.

 

You don't even know if the poster owes taxes where the bailiff can smash down the door!

 

I shouldnt think a county court judge overseeing a Ctax liability order or CCJ would even have the legal mechanisms to deal with it.

 

A Magistrate deals with Council Tax liabilities not a county court judge!

 

 

 

 

Creditor would have to make you bankrupt and then get the IP to reverse the sale which given the value of household goods, means they would simply revert back to your ownership, and youd be 2p down.

 

SD's seem to be a wonderful and exciting tool to basically negate a bailiff's only power and ammunition before he even turns up. And they should be used more.

 

If 4 out of every 5 addresses a bailiff calls on can provide an SD, then they are going to soon be entering their own credit crunch problems!

 

What are you on about here?:?

 

 

 

Pretty poor post here, the reader wants some accurate advice.

[caledfwlch]

Pretty poor post here' date=' the reader wants some accurate advice.[/quote']

 

The point I am making is, one can get a friend or family member to "buy" ones goods for any amount you care to think of. They can then go to court or a solicitors and do a statutory declaration claiming ownership of the goods.

 

In the case of a bailiff enforcing civil debts such as council tax, and one imagines credit card CCJ's etc it means that should the bailiff manage to gain entry, he would not be able to levy on any goods, as they are all owned, provable by the Statutory Declaration by someone who isnt the debtor named on the CCJ or Liability Order.

 

As far as I understand it, it is not against the law to dispose of your goods in this way in order to prevent a Bailiff from levying upon them. A bailiff has no lawful claim upon any goods you may or may not own until he has gained peaceful entry and levied upon the items. Hiding them, or selling them are perfectly legal tools for a debtor.

 

But I was making the point that none of this works in the case of bankruptcy, where the official receiver can look at your history and try to reverse any asset disposals, sales, gifts you have made, up to however many years the law currently states.

 

Please state for which debts selling your old tv/washing machine/dvd player to a friend to stop them being leviable by a Bailiff could get you into hot water? I suspect income Tax/VAT arrears could be one, what else?

[diddydicky]

i post this advice as a retired certificated bailiff .

 

do not accept these old wives tales about selling stuff to your family or friends, bailiffs are (contrary to popular beliief) intelligent people.

 

If the bailiff thinks the receipt is dodgy then so will the judge or registrar that you will have to apply to to get compensation,

 

the bailiff is allowed to still sieze and sell the goods (including jointly owned goods of man and wife even if the wife is not involved in the debt) if he believes the receipt (however old it appears) is bogus.

 

It is then up to you to apply to the courts to disprove this- expensive and given the comments i made earlier about judges not being fools either- extremley unlikely.

 

if the bailiff has not entered by all means prevent entry and he can do nothing (but may well return on a warm summers day when your doors are not locked!

 

by all means ship out stuff prior to the bailiff calling- but once listed it is a criminal offence to dispose of them.

 

by the time the bailiff is involved it usually means that all attempts to get you to pay even by instalments have failed and it really is the last chance saloon

 

prevent entry then WRITE (dont phone) to the bailiff company 9copy the creditor) and make offer of regular payments and include the first payment as a sign of goodwill keep making payments even if the bailiff company refuses to accept them, or write directly to the creditor and ask them to accept payments and call the bailiffs off.

 

bailiffs (again contrary to popular beleif) are after the people who WONT pay not the people who CANT pay!

[Conniff]

bailiffs (again contrary to popular beleif) are after the people who WONT pay not the people who CANT pay!

 

That bit I definately do not believe. Do bailiffs ask if they can afford it or not? no, they make every effort to get in and levy.

They aren't interested in the ability to pay, if they were they would hand it right back to the creditor without even making a visit or demand.

So that is pure bulls poo.

[diddydicky]

well i was offering advice and not taking sides but there ARE two sides to the story

and this is the other one

 

You might like to know that the bailiff enters into a bond (usually 100,000 pounds) and if the warrant is issued for a criminal debt (fines etc), he is legally obliged to enforce the warrant he has been given by the court

 

The warrant specifically orders him to collect the FULL amount OR sieze the debtors goods and has no authority for him to agree to payments- this he does off his own back and strictly is in breach of the terms of the warrant.

 

the time for making agreements is long past when the bailiff is instructed and i have to say that whilst accidents do happen and to quote your own language, in 99.9% of cases where debtors plead to the bailiff that they know nothing of the debt etc etc it is pure "bulls Poo"

 

you may well have fallen into hard times but if it is a fine it is a punishment and if you try to avoid being punished then that is tantamount to contempt of court

 

if it is a civil debt - it is not as many people would like to think a victimless debt- quite often hardworking shopkeepers and traders who have spent years building their business are stitched up by people who buy stuff knowing full well they cannot afford it but to hell with the consequences

[Conniff]

So why did you spout that cr@p about after the wont pay and not the can't pay if it's not the case.

[caledfwlch]

So why did you spout that cr@p about after the wont pay and not the can't pay if it's not the case.

 

Because Bailiffs lie as a daily part of their business so they cant keep track of all their mistruths?

 

I too noticed how the "not interested in cant pays" quickly became "everyone is a wont pay"

 

The funny thing is, its not the debtors of "poor shopkeepers and small businesses having to send bailiffs" that we hear from, its the parking tickets, and the council tax people, we mainly hear about. Which suggests that the chaps enforcing the poor shopkeepers debts are doing their job lawfully, whilst its the other fellows who are dodgy.

[diddydicky]

not what i said at all - however i suspect that you are so entrenched in your views that you will never see both sides of the argument and so will never take a balanced view .

 

slagging off other people who are just trying to do their jobs and calling them liars cheats and crooks is easier on the conscience of those few people whose real motive on visiting such sites as these is to see if they can find an "easy" way out of their obligations. forgive me i thought the purpose of this site was for people to seek advice as to how to rectify wrongful charges not avoid legitimate ones

[caledfwlch]

not what i said at all - however i suspect that you are so entrenched in your views that you will never see both sides of the argument and so will never take a balanced view .

 

slagging off other people who are just trying to do their jobs and calling them liars cheats and crooks is easier on the conscience of those few people whose real motive on visiting such sites as these is to see if they can find an "easy" way out of their obligations. forgive me i thought the purpose of this site was for people to seek advice as to how to rectify wrongful charges not avoid legitimate ones

 

The Police who gunned down an innocent man in the london underground were "just doing their jobs as ordered" the SS guards at the death camps were "just doing their jobs" The Religious Police who murder and torture people in Iran are just "doing their jobs" Doing your job is no excuse for bad behaviour.

 

Take a look in the bailiff forums and you will see why people are not actually trying to find an easy way out of obligations but are trying to ensure that they are not financially ruined, or are unable to feed their children because a bailiff just "doing his job" is calling.

 

Maybe you retired a few years ago when it was a more honest profession? I suppose the chap famously caught on BBC camera who uses ladders to break into properties he knows the debtor is not resident at is "just doing his job" too.

 

Through friends and family and personal experience, I have witnessed 7 bailiffs "just doing their job" only one of those performed that job legally, charged the charges he is lawfully allowed to do so, and generally acted like a human being, the others were either violent, lied through their teeth, attempted to commit fraud or tried to force entry without a levy. Not exactly good figures are they?

 

I am pretty set in my opinions of bailiffs - this is because they are an archaic throwback to medieval feudalism, they have no place in a modern democratic society and only exist as a means of PUNISHING people for getting into debt, the collection of the debt is secondary, since we cannot be sent to prison anymore. There are easier, cheaper far more humane and far more effective means of debt collection and enforcement available to the legal system in 21st century Britain.

 

I can understand why people become bailiffs, the money can be good, you work your own hours (within lawful limits of course ) years ago it was a steady, and probably fairly honourable profession. But it has been thoroughly shown up in recent years to be an often corrupt profession driven by ruthlessness and wannabe gangsters. Basically the profession has suffered what any profession that becomes target obsessed, especially when those targets directly translate as cash in the bank, whilst failure means no cash in the bank.

 

Its another reason why the banks are dramatically failing - Targets, why the police chase lesser crimes instead of spending more time on the serious. Basically the bane of modern britain.

 

If every dog you meet tries to bite you, I think it would be only fair to develop a complex that any future dog you meet will try to bite you.

 

As an ex bailiff, diddy, what would you say is the reason for bailiffs being percieved as so bad nowadays? See, 10 years ago I thought nothing of them, scary people perhaps, but there for a reason, its only through experience, including a mate being head butted upon answering the door so entry could be made that changed my perception.

 

Or has it always had plenty of bad apples, but only recent years with the expansion of the internet and more ways to communicate and receive and report news that it has become wider knowledge?

[diddydicky]

firstly yes the police WERE doing their job - and if they had failed to shoot and the guy did have a bomb and blew up your mother and 300 other people i haev no doubt whatsoever that YOU would be one of the first slagging them off for not doing their job

 

secondly - ok wiseguy all attempts over many months to get me to pay a debt i justly owe have failed and i have stuck two fingers up

 

so you tell me without bailiffs as a last resort how you intend to pay