i have had a charge placed on my home which i have no knowlage about

[dreaded]

in 1998 a firm placed a charge on my home which i had no knowlage about. all papers from the court went to my morgage company they did not forward any information to me. the firm which says i owe the money to have no proof that i owe the money. they cannot produce any form of proof that i owe the money or any proof of any money paid agaist the debt. how can i get this charge removed from my home as i may wish to move soon they are also still charging me intrest. the morgage has been payed off so the house is mine please advise many thanks

[holly3smith]

any company persuing a debt must follow a legal code of practice which you can get from your local court or is probably available on the net. they must be able to prove they have completed each stage of the process for their action to be legal. citizens advice might be able to help you reach an agreement with the company to freeze interest charges whilst you investigate the matter.

[themas]

2 part post

This looks as if it was a charge put on because they had got a county court judgement (ccj) for a debt, and you had not complied with the judgement. Are you saying that you do not owe them any money and never did? Or are you saying that there is no proof that you owed &/or owe them money? These are two very different things!

If you did owe them money & have not paid it then it is difficult to see how you can get the charge removed without paying the money, plus the interest which will have been added. (If the did get a ccj & it was for more than �5K then they are allowed to add interest.) You could try arguing that you never had a debt to them but if you did so on oath this would be perjury. Or you could ask for the ccj & charging order to be set aside on the grounds that you were never advised of them. But this would only succeed if you were able to get the judge to accept that - if you had known about the case - your defence would have resulted in the outcome being different.

[themas]

2nd part

On the other hand, if you are satisfied you never did owe them any money you would be justified in stating this on oath if necessary - together with your explanation as to why the documents never reached you. This would then be part of an application to set the judgement etc. aside. You would need to get evidence from the mortgage lender confirming that they had the documents and didn't pass them on.

It does seem extraordinary that the documents should go to the mortgage lender - to issue a claim leading to a ccj the creditor normally has to give the last known address of the debtor and the documents are sent there. The mortgage lender might get documents about the charging order, but the debtor should also have information about it because it is part of the enforcement action following the ccj.

I have assumed in all the above that this charge did arise from a ccj. You may be able to check here:

www.registry-trust.org.uk

whether there was a ccj issued against you. (I am not sure how far back the records go.)

If there is not a ccj involved then it is all even odder! I think you will need legal advice if you can't get the company to remove the charge voluntarily.