Court Claim

[waterjocky]

Good afternoon,
I'm looking for advice regarding a court claim that I received today in relation to car finance and how or if I can defend it.
In October 2017 I suffered a heart attack and could not work, which resulted in missed payments on my hire purchase agreement.
Shortly after, they offered me a Voluntary termination of my agreement as I had already paid more than a third of the total amount payable, which I thought was great! and the car could go back to them without having a huge liability owing.
They sent me their VT agreement which basically stated that they could charge me for collection of the vehicle and also for any other costs or repairs to the vehicle, I was basically expected to give them my consent to charge me whatever they wanted. I never returned their VT agreement but instead used a VT template from this site and sent that to them instead that agreed to a VT but without their terms of a VT.
They have totally ignored my VT agreement and have today issued a county court claim for the return of the car and/or the full balance remaining of £9000.
I presume they have ignored my VT agreement in because the car would only fetch around £2000 at auction and has a few issues due to not being used/moved since Oct 17 which they were made aware of, and they are trying to avoid a considerable shortfall, hence the CC claim.
Please could someone offer advice on how I should proceed?, I'm not opposed to the vehicle going back to them, far from it but I don't agree that I should be liable for court/interest charges after previously trying to VT my agreement.

Thank you

[_______]

Unless you can persuade the claimants out of court to agree to the VT you sent them - or if you still have time to agree to the one they sent you - then the VT agreements you have sent each other will amount to very little in the context of your original finance agreement. They are just requests that you have sent each other and respectively declined to agree to.

Now that a claim has been issued to the court, your main reference point needs to be what your original finance agreement would allow the court to enforce against you. If your agreement says that in this situation you must return the car and pay the remaining balance after deducting auction proceeds then that is what the court could order you to do.

To avoid the process dragging through court, your offer has to be a more attractive option for the claimant than that outcome. That will involve them getting less from you but will also cost them less time and money going through court. The original VT they sent you is a good indication of what they were willing to accept, but you clearly gave them sufficiently little confidence that they could persuade you to accept it that they were willing to go to the expense of filing the court claim. They may now expect you to cover their cost of taking that route but they're unlikely to have any other good reason to be unwilling to accept a VT which is basically the same apart from that cost.

If the VT they offered would leave you worse off than what they can get from you in court, you need to find some middle ground between the VT you offered and the likely outcome of a court claim.