Before I met my wife she was living with a previous boyfriend in a 2 bedroom flat in Horsham, West Sussex.

They split up, the boyfriend moved out and for a time he contributed to the mortgage.

After a period of time this stopped and she was faced with paying the whole amount. She wrote to the Halifax on many occassions to get his name of the mortgage and to re-negotiate a new deal. They declined until the arrears had been cleared.

Eventually she got deeper and deeper into debt and finally decided on a voluntary repossession and returned the keys along with a letter to the Halifax.

That was in 1995 and she has recently received a debt letter from Direct Legal and collections requesting payment for the shortfall liability of #26,000.

My questions are fairly simple:

1. Her first mistake, having look through your website, is that she filled in and returned the statement of earnings and outgoings. How does this affect her and can she in any way rewind this act and how has she helped her case.

2. As i was not party to this property and we now own a house in my name only, can this be used in any way to off set this debt against my wife.

3. I heard recently that a rule had been passed, which all the building societies had agreed to that changed the final chase date from 12 to 6 years and that all letters had to be sent out by the 11th February 2000. Is this correct? She received her first letter on 17th February 2000, so is the whole void any way.

I would appreciate any help you can give us, I'm sure you can agree, this is giving us both a tremendous amount of stress right now, which is not helped by the fact that my wife is pregnant with our second child.

Yours kindly

M.Rody

-- (mrody@copperline.freeserve.co.uk), March 20, 2000