Excessive? legal costs on Mortgage Arrears Money Judgement...

[spot]

I had action taken against me by a bank for mortgage arrears and

they took me to court and obtained a money judgement on a sum of money.

 

They won and were given a Possession Order and MJ on the outstanding balance of the mortgage..

 

Included in that figure were a lot of legal costs many of which I do not feel I owe.

 

Rather than be evicted I sold up and had to pay the whole lot so the Possession Order was never effectively enforced.

 

However, the pressure they put upon us was very traumatising

and that in itself forced us into selling our home of 15 yrs.

 

My Question please:

 

If I prove these legal costs were added to my mortgage wrongly

as I assert does that make the money judgement incorrect

and what are the consequences of a lender getting the money Judgement wrong,

ie..what are my remedies?

 

This involves a lot of money as I fought them so I am not talking pennies here,

but they have manipulated the figures and just dumped them on my mortgage balance without advising me,

I have obtained a breakdown of them and they were clearly wrong.

 

I am not wanting to either go back into court or use solicitors as I trust no one after what we went through

and as this is a self help forum wondered if anyone could advise me on how

 

a)I can tackle this,

b) what legally is the position with a wrongly stated money judgement

after the property has been sold and the relevance of the court repossession order now dead in the water?

 

Thanks

 

Spot

[BankFodder]

Firstly, I expect that everyone would just consider that it is a mistake and that it wasn't done deliberately or recklessly. It would take some very specific and clear evidence to get people to think otherwise. The tendency would be to consider that you are a disgruntled losing defendant.

 

On that basis, if you can show that the figures were wrong, then you would be able to claim the money back and I expect that the way to do this would be to make an application to the court on an N244. I really don't know if it would need a setaside or what. It is beyond my experience.

 

However, if it transpires that you are right, then what might be the consequences.

If the sum is so great that you can show that but for the bank's error, you would not have needed to sell your home, then you will need to raise this before the judge. I'm not at all sure what line he would take but it would help[ if you could show some kind of fault by the bank.

 

If the judge feels that the extra money made no difference to your decision to sell, then you would just get a refund.

 

Of course, the question will be asked as to why you didn't raise all of this at the trial and make your objections there. I think that you are going to have a difficult time and you had better get used to seeing eyebrows being raised at every turn.

[spot]

Firstly, I expect that everyone would just consider that it is a mistake and that it wasn't done deliberately or recklessly. It would take some very specific and clear evidence to get people to think otherwise. The tendency would be to consider that you are a disgruntled losing defendant.

 

On that basis, if you can show that the figures were wrong, then you would be able to claim the money back and I expect that the way to do this would be to make an application to the court on an N244. I really don't know if it would need a setaside or what. It is beyond my experience.

 

However, if it transpires that you are right, then what might be the consequences.

If the sum is so great that you can show that but for the bank's error, you would not have needed to sell your home, then you will need to raise this before the judge. I'm not at all sure what line he would take but it would help[ if you could show some kind of fault by the bank.

 

If the judge feels that the extra money made no difference to your decision to sell, then you would just get a refund.

 

Of course, the question will be asked as to why you didn't raise all of this at the trial and make your objections there. I think that you are going to have a difficult time and you had better get used to seeing eyebrows being raised at every turn.

 

Thanks Bankfodder.

 

Why didn't I raise this before the hearing? - because It has taken more than just a raised eyebrow to extract the details of the costs from the company concerned. The hearing was in March, I saw these charges on the annual mortgage statement without breakdown, without any mention of them 10 months after the event. That's why.

 

Many of these charges were just dumped onto my mortgage balance by the lender as the solicitors invoices were raised to them - not a word to me and these, I might add, are not just costs involved in a repossession action, these cover many charges raised for communications between solicitor and company which had nothing to do with the repo action, but 'other' negotiations' which I had been involved in which ended in a Tomlin Order which stated my costs would and had to be met. As I didn't know about 'their' charges, I submitted my own costs which they paid, yet the lender added 5 or 6 times the amount of my own to cover their own costs and told me nothing about them.

 

So it's not just a disgruntled debtor. Would it have made any difference to the action? - well possibly yes, but knowing the judiciary and the way it works from experience, they will probably say it wouldn't, but the balances from 2008 would have been less, the interest charged would have been less so the arrears they chased would have been less and possibly managable - who knows when the pressure is on how you might get through it?

 

I had over £600k in free equity over and above any and all charges on my property, so there was no risk to them whatsoever. I sold-up because my wife nearly had a breakdown and couldn't handle the pressure and threats any longer. Once sold, it's respite time for their evil, but this time I'm in control, not them. That makes a wonderful difference to the sparring methods.

 

I just wondered about this Money Judgement sum as I know little about them, but with area's such as CCA and default notices, things have to be done to the letter as with Agreement documents and I was interested to know what exactly happened IF a Money Judgement (as opposed to just a repossession order) was incorrect. Get adefault sum wrong and the consequences are dire, so what about the Money Judgement?

 

See where I'm coming from?

 

Thanks for your input. I'm sure one of the legally knowledgeable will steer me in the right direction as the devil in these things is in the detail.

 

Spot

[BRIGADIER2JCS]

When was the judgement made?

[spot]

When was the judgement made?

 

March 2012

[BRIGADIER2JCS]

March 2012

 

 

After two years you will certainly need to have a very good defence to the original claim if you go for set aside.

[spot]

Well in March 2012 I had the Order, and then entered into serious negotiations over another issue of the mortgage set-up which continued for some time, including a meeting in Sept 2012 with their solicitor and a member of the lenders legal team.

 

I already had the property on the market, but hoped to sort this issue out and thereafter have resolved the issues of balances...this went on until they pulled a fast one at the end by not answering any questions or considering my proposals which they'd asked me to provide - rejecting out of hand each and every one of them without making any representation themselves, other than threatening me with eviction..so we sold in Jan 2013 as my Wife could stand it no longer. Had they been transparent and honest and negotiated as I was doing then the arrears would have gone away as would most of the mortgage altogether, but they closed ranks, refused to engage in anything much as Bankfodder described in his final paragraph above and the lender and their solicitors had me in a corner - deep pocket litigation and intimidation tactic...I had little choice, given my wife's condition, to sell up and come back to the issue. They thought I'd go away.

 

We sold, bought a new place which she is very unhappy in, and I have been almost banned from getting involved by her in even sitting at my PC, but I have slowly rebuilt the situation. I even had to sacrifice my half of the new house due to the losses incurred by me over the fights I had with these lenders- that's hard given I had built a business which paid for the house and she'd had no paid job (apart from raising the family).

 

It was never going to be easy, I can take that, she couldn't, but now I am going back over every last detail but it has taken me a year of sheer hell bringing the temperature down so that divorce was not the next option as it was back in January 2013 when we moved.

 

There are a lot of questions still to be answered including their lying to the court (allegedly) and it'll take some time to unravel, but I played their legal game last time and ended up paying for it in spectacular fashion, but now the fight is on my terms and I am a street fighter. I will not rely on a judge because I have been shafted by 2 thus far one of whom made judgement even though admitting she had not read my witness statement and I have little faith in solicitors and no money left to pay them until I have 100% detail to support what I allege like an answer to the question I opened this thread with. I'll need my wife's permission out of respect for her and my promises not to do anything without telling her and that is something she will only give once I'm ready to present it to her in detail and at the right time - it's delicate, as she is. So whilst this may look simple enough as to why it takes time, human emotion and states of mind are not easily put into black and white as you are perhaps implying a court may respond.

 

Piece by piece I am putting this together and then we'll let the right people decide what needs to be done either the FCA or even the raising of a fraud investigation as fraud I believe has been committed (I have the proof - it's just getting it into the right hands and finding someone to do something constructive with it, I'll only have one shot).

 

Does that make more sense now?

 

Thanks Brigadier..

 

Spot

[spot]

Update:

 

It's been a hard year or so getting thought he reluctance of my wife to allow any kind of input to this problem given the trauma we went through selling up under pressure. But, I got the invoices and costs breakdowns from the banks solicitors with regards to their costs relating to my challenges.

 

Penny for penny, since 2007 the bank have applied ALL of the solicitors invoices to our mtg account (since redeemed in 2013) all £47,400 worth.

 

On these invoices are some telling notes corresponding to the solicitors actions and the cost applied ie:

 

ABC solicitor 21.01.2014 letter to client 0,30 minutes - £x

ABC solicitor 23.01.2014 letter to Spot 0.20 -£x and so on from 2007 to 2013

 

Now in 2010 I applied to the bank with my 10 quid for my DSAR which in their wisdom felt they needed to pass by the solicitor to redact the hell out of before I received it.

 

Total charge on their invoice for doing so and reading through it - £630 +vat in Oct 2010

 

So not only did I pay my 10 quid, the bank put the £630 onto my mortgage as part of 'prolonged litigation' and began chagring interest at contractural mtg interest rate.

 

In 2012 when they took me to court and acquired their Money Judgement it included this additional £630 +VAT +Interest which makes the Judgement sum wrong.

 

Also on these notes from the solicitor were a partners notes against his input time and one of those notes stated ' Agreeing a Stonewall Strategy with ABC (solicitor in his team looking after my account).

 

My questions to the bank which I was having considerable troube getting answers to were regulatory questions the bank should answer for free.

 

Another comment (and charge) was from the same partner and it basically said: Why should we tell him the answers when he will throw them back at our client, it is not for our client to fuel the fire to have it thrown back at them.

 

I can't show you the full details here, it would take too long, but this is a Partner of a seriously large firm of solicitors admitting they had agreed, not just discussed, but agreed a stonewall strategy to stop me getting the regulatory information I was entitled to get from their client the bank as a matter of course - via Transparency and TCF's

 

So, out of the 47k I can identify at least 40k which should have been the banks costs and not mine, yet they were sytematically posted to our account.

 

I have the proof, written in their own hand, not something I am assuming or made up - it's there for the world to see written by them and probably sent out by some pleb in the bank without passing it by the redactors first. But hey ho, I got them.

 

2 questions now,

 

1) What difference does it make if the Money Judgement sum/figure is wrong?

 

 

2) does this sound to anyone like fraud by the Partner and his team in denying me information which I am legally entitled to know like 'who regulated a further advance we tookand what do you think of this 'agreeing a stonewall strategy' to stop me receiving any answer so that I would sell my home and get their client paid off......?

 

Be interested in hearing the legal buffs on here opinion.

 

Thanks

 

Spot