There has been six months of communication between myself and DLA acting on behalf of Abbey National, who say I owe £30,000 for shortfall debt. I have repeatedly asked for all relevant documents, the only things they have sent me is one page of a mortgage application form signed by me and a copy of a MIRAS 5 application also signed by me but with the wrong address on it!! They say they have sent all documentation they can and say this substantiates their claim! I keep writing back asking for everything, I haven't given up. Can anyone tell me how important an MJO is? So far they are ignoring me and will not tell me if there is one or if the MIG was actually activated. They have sent me some general information about MIG's which says that the borrower claims back any money paid to them via the MIG from the repossessee on behalf of the insurers, but I still don't know if they did claim. Any advice on MJO's will be gratefully received.

-- Trish Urmston (trish5493@aol.com), June 12, 2001

Answers

A money judgement order is very important to the lender because it means that they have a court order that you owe them X amount and they can use the various options available to them (attachment of earnings, charging order etc) to enforce that MJO.

From what you say, it sounds as though they haven't got an MJO. There would be no point in going back and forth in correspondence if they had.

What you need to ask for is a copy of the completion statement from the sale of the property. Take a look at the information on this website and the sample letters for how to ask for extra information.

Once you've got the completion statement, you can go through each item claimed and ask for invoices/statements etc.

So write back to DLA, and ask for a completion statement. When you've got it, take it from there.

-- pendle (pendle@amun-ra.demon.co.uk), June 12, 2001.

As pendle says the MJO is the authoiry given by the court for them to recover the shortfall. They do need one and can return to court, in theory at any time, to get one. I would doubt though whether after long periods of time, 11 years in my case, they would be granted the MJO.

It is likely that when they finally take notice of your request they will simply say they do not need one. I have had this said to me after 4 letters that simply ignored my request - one dealt with nothing else!! The ones chasing me are for the insurance company and say that it does not affect their rights of subrogation. I have not denied this but maintain that they must have one in order to recover the monies whether the debt is subrogated or not. I have spoken to Carol Riley at NAMV - phone number on this site if you need it under who help - and she confirmns that it is irrelevant who is chasing. THEY MUST HAVE THE MJO.

Hope that helps but also I recommend everything else pendle says

-- Matt (mattyc@ntlworld.com), June 13, 2001.

Hi Trish,

You've had about as much documentation from them, as what the majority of the rest of us has had -practically zilch!

My own personal opinion, especially with older cases of repossession (early nineties), is that we are "good debt-collection cases". That is to say they don't really have any intention of taking us to court. They are trying to wear us down into making offers of settlement, however long it takes. The mere fact that they are not interested in substanciating the alledged debt, coupled with the new Woolf reforms, in my opinion proves this point. Appologies for making it sound so depressing.

Pendle and Matt are right. Ask them for the Completion Statement but I would also ask them to explain why they haven't already sent it to you, especially after 6 Mths of letters, and go from there.

Good luck

-- Stephen Pooley (stephen.pooley@ntlworld.com), June 13, 2001.

I'd also ask to see the mortgage deed. They seem so keen to 'prove' that you actually had the mortgage, they're unlikely to have kept this (or a copy).

It might be useful to see what your deed clauses say happens in the event of a MIG claim. If there is any ambiguity, so much the worse for the lenders.

-- Eleanor Scott (eleanor.scott@btinternet.com), June 14, 2001.