To give debt collectors my relatives address?

[Famproblems1]

NC, I'll try to keep it short.

5 years ago I let a younger relative come and stay with me temporarily when she was leaving domestic violence in another part of the country, she stayed with me for approx 12 months before moving on into a place of her own with her small children.

During the course of that relationship alot of debt was accumulated before she left age 20..she says the majority of this was due to the partner taking out contract phones and payday loans using her details and that she had no control of her finances.

Despite the fact she doesn't live here anymore and hasn't for almost 4 years I'm still getting letters here addressed to her from debt collectors asking for money and to be honest I'm tired of it and want no part of it.

Obviously I've mentioned this to her a number of times and she claims she has contacted the companies and told them not to send anything else to my address as she doesn't live here. If that's true, which is debatable, then they clearly haven't listened.

I'm aware that she's paying a token sum to a couple of different companies on a monthly basis so she she says she's doing what she can but claims to be out of her depth and can only work part time. She has refused to give her address to these people citing that she's vulnerable with MH problems and has her disabled child there.

I received another letter through the door for her this morning after a peaceful couple of months, low and behold a debt collection company demanding £300 odd and I've reached the end of my rope.

We spoke over the phone which ended in something of a heated discussion because I said I'm going to give them her new address as I'm sick of the letters coming here and don't want debt collectors turning up here trying to take control of my property.

She then spoke to her mother who called me and implied I was being cruel.

So WIBU to do exactly that?

Just let them trace her.

I think you did absolutely the right thing. We have received lots of letters for the previous owners of our home. He said he hadn’t yet got around to changing address and left us lots of stamped envelopes for forwarding this post, but after a year (long after we had run out of envelopes) it was still arriving. Funnily enough all of this post was addressed to his business, they managed to change the address for their personal correspondence. We continued to forward on for a while, but after a visit from a debt collector and receiving concerning letters over and over again, dh began returning to sender with the date that the previous occupants moved. This did absolutely nothing so after another couple of months he began to open them and contact the companies to let them know they had moved ages ago and to let them know the forwarding address. 18 months after we moved in they finally seem to be tailing off. It certainly hasn’t ‘proved a connection’ as we explained how we came to have the forwarding address in the first place.

It’s all very well saying that the debt collection companies can’t do x, y, z but if you haven’t had any experience of this type of thing how are you to know that? I found the whole thing very stressful and worrying. One of the reasons we moved into our home was its private, secure location. Ds is old enough to be left home alone and I don’t want him being accosted by random debt collectors. I liked the previous occupants and certainly didn’t want to get them into trouble but at the end of the day I just moved house, I didn’t ask to receive a pile of their unpaid bills. Bottom line is they should not have put us in this position in the first place.

Op supported her niece in her hour of need, it isn’t unreasonable to be upset at being left in this position and she isn’t wrong to pass this problem back to her niece. She did her bit to help and she shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for wanting to live her life in peace.

It’s perfectly simple - don’t make her personally responsible for letting these companies know she’s moved out. If she was going to do that she would have done it by now. Contact the company yourself whenever you get a letter and give the dates that she lived there. You don’t need to give them her address. If they press you for it tell them you don’t know it - that’s why YOU are making the call and not her. Ask them to stop sending the letters because they won’t reach her. Some companies tell you that computer generated letters will continue for a little while until the systems are updated, but in my experience this has only happened once or twice. Does your relative holds driving licence ? If so, direct debt collectors to the DVLA as in some cases they can supply contact info depending on the type of debt - by law you have to inform DVLA of a change of address.

You could also just write ‘not known at this address on the envelope and pop it back in the post unopened - not sure how likely it is that the bailiffs would show up eventually though.

Our current home was rented out to various tenants by the previous owner. For the first six months after moving in we were inundated with similar letters - everything from phone contracts to bank statements, to defaulted loans and unpaid parking fines - these included debts which had been passed on to bailiffs. In one instance we got a summons in relation to a road accident where the previous tenant was being sued. It really opened my eyes to how dishonest people can be - in our experience it seems that some people are quite happy too run up debt, move home and hope that they leave the mess behind.

@BlueDahlia69

The irony is, like previously said, all the OP has done now has proven she has a connection to the niece by knowing her current address.

which still doesn't make her responsible for her Nieces debt

Why do people keep saying this when absolutely nobody has said otherwise? Where has anyone on this thread in 20+ pages said OP is responsible and should pay the debts? (Spoiler: you won't find a single post saying that.)

MeadowHay
There were actually a few suggestions that OP might help out by paying some off 😏