Money Owed, What Next?

[Manical]

Some background to my situation.

My daughter had a boyfriend (now ex) that she lived with at the time.
He was 11 years here senior and this was her first serious relationship.
As he had bad credit, he encouraged my daughter to take out credit cards (4 off) and began to spend beyond their means.
This came to a head when my daughter ask for help as they could not afford the payments when they had amassed a debt of £12,000.

So she approached me and as a parent you try and help your children out, so reluctantly I took out a personal loan and paid off all the credit cards.

The (verbal) agreement was that my daughter and her boyfriend would each pay me £90 per month over 7 years to settle the debt.

I proceeded to keep a spreadsheet with the payments.

The 2 separated after around 2 1/2 year of payments and eventually the payments began to get sporadic.

I would use facebook messenger to contact the ex boyfriend to remind him of his payments and I deliberately mentioned the total amount on messenger so that I had some record which he never disputed.

Eventually he blocked me so that I was unable to contact him and he stopped making any payments.

I wrote to him to explain that unless he continued with his payments, I would be forced to go through the courts.
He never responded, so I proceeded to raise this through Money Claim On Line (MCOL).

The Notice of Issue of my claim was served on 11 December 2012 for £3,895 plus £100 Issue fee was sent to the claimant to which there was no response.
I then applied for a Request for Judgement which was served on the defendant on the 4th February 2013 which again was ignored by the defendant.
My next stage was to apply for a Request for Warrant of Execution which incurred an additional £100, so the debt was now £4,095 and this was served on the 15th April 2013.
I received notification that the Bailiffs found nothing of value and so I have received absolutely nothing.
During this time I was out of work and unable to proceed with pursueing this further through the courts.

I have now started to proceed once again to try and reclaim my money, but attempts to MCOL to see where I go from here has resulted in no communications back from them?

So to cut a long story short, I'm not sure where to go from here?

The defendant has since moved house and remarried and walked away from the money owed to me.

Any advice would be gratefully received.

Manical

[Debt Camel]

Re: Money Owed, What Next?

Unless you have a good reason to think he has a well paid job or assets in his name, you probably have no options at all. Sorry. I hope your daughter has repaid you her half.

[Manical]

Re: Money Owed, What Next?

Debt Camel, thanks for you reply.
I assume that if the defendant can afford sky TV subscription ( which I don't have) and a gym membership, he can surely afford to be repaying me what is owed?

Okay, what I wanted to know is as this has been going on a while, would this still be classed as ongoing or do I have to resurrect this through the courts?
If so, how would I go about doing it?

[R0b]

Re: Money Owed, What Next?

If judgment is not satisfied then this would be an ongoing issue rather than having to go through the court claims process again.

Are you aware of him working at all? You could apply for an attachment of earnings which deducts automatically from his bank account directly so you need not worry about the repayments. It is relatively inexpensive and a popular option, though the courts will usually work out the minimum amount he needs to live off which is protected and the remainder is up for grabs.

When you apply for an attachment of earnings order, he will need to fill in usually an income/expenditure sheet showing the financial circumstances so the court can decide what order to make. The downside to this is that the money you receive may not be too much and therefore could take some time to repay. It is also an offence for him to give incorrect information and mislead the court. I believe the fees for this is £100 or thereabouts.

Alternatively, you could make an application for him to attend court and obtain information which is about £50 from what I recall. Here you can have him provide information about his means, employment etc. If he fails to comply with the order to attend court then it is contempt of court and it is possible for a court to issue a warrant for him to be brought before a court and/or committal proceedings.

If he is self-employed or unemployed in particular then you cannot apply for an AOE but as debt camel has said, unless he is working its unlikely you are going to see any of the money.

Your alternative could be to request an new issue of the warrant at the new address, though again it may not prove fruitful. If he is living with his wife now then in order for bailiffs not to take away any valuables, she would need to prove that she paid for them usually by way of receipts or some other proof. If she couldn't prove it then the bailiffs may be able to put some pressure on repaying the monies back. The cost of re-issuing a writ is something like 1/3 of the original cost of the application. Not guaranteed though

[Manical]

Re: Money Owed, What Next?

Hi Rob,

Many thanks for taking the time to explain various options open to me, it really is appreciated as I have been at a loss what to do next and at least I have some options to review and decide how to proceed.
I'll keep this forum updated with my progress as this may be useful for someone else.