To be blamed for their financial situation

[Feelingfloaty22]

Last year my relative was going on a family holiday during the summer with her dc and spouse. They live in another part of the country but booked flight tickets leaving from an airport nearish to where I live. She asked if she could drive down to my area with her family so they could stay at my place the night before her flight and leave her car on my road for the week she was away. They caught an uber to the airport the next day.

She had also earlier that year got a pet that she needed to be looked after so asked me to stay at her place for the week with my dc to look after her pet whilst she was away and then I could use her house as a base to visit places near her area (she lives within driving distance of some beautiful parts of the UK to visit in the summer).

Anyway my road has permit parking which i pay the council for and as a resident I can pay for a visitor permit for someone else's car who is visiting me using a third party parking app. This was what we agreed I would do and I did this for the first couple of days. Then I ran in to a problem on the app that would not allow me to buy another visitor permit as my parking permit had supposedly expired. When i checked the council website it had not. I eventually worked out on the second day of this happening that the app date for my resident permit was not the same as the council as it started on the day I registered on the app not the day I paid for my permit. I know this is really boring but I'm getting there.

Anyway so I went back to buying resident parking permits for my dsis car. However when she got back from her trip she found that she had 3 parking tickets on her car. She was highly annoyed and blamed this on me so asked me to pay for the fines. I explained the situation and told her I would appeal it on her behalf. I sent a letter of appeal to the council for the parking fines and explained it was a technical issue preventing me from buying the visitor permit. I did not hear back from the council and thought we had a lucky escape.

A few months down the line my bil received a letter saying he had to pay the fine otherwise he would receive a CCJ. He was the registered owner of the car but i think he sold it so it took longer to contact him. However, as my bil was away for a few months for work he did not see the letter and my dsis did not open it either. Consequently the CCJ was issued and they had to pay the fine. My bil and dsis blame me saying that I should have paid for the 3 fines initially (over £100) instead of appealing it and should have followed up when i didnt get a response from the council.

I was very apologetic and offered to pay the cost of removing the CCJ (about £375). I forwarded the forms to do this to my dsis and asked her to fill in the paperwork as i did not know their personal details needed to apply to remove it. My dsis and bil decided not to remove the CCJ and instead my dsis asked me to pay the cost of the fine £200 to her. She seems to think they cant remove it but wont explain why. I said fine.

Anyway in conversations with my dsis she brings this up occasionally and blames me for ruining her h's credit rating. I normally bite my tongue but on this occasion I could not as she started to say that i had planned it. I told her that they were likely have been contacted by the council/debt recovery company/courts several times before the CCJ and they did not open their letters and see the warnings. In the past year I received 2 fines for staying in 2 separate car parks too long that I did not pay upfront. I received several letters before it got to the point of threatening me with a CCJ which spanned over at least 2 months to 3 months. So it was partially their bad administration and communication that they didn't agree some way for my dsis to check her spouses letters whilst he was away. Also I had offered to pay to remove the CCJ which would have improved her credit score and she had just wanted the money for the fine. (My dsis hates filling in forms and her h also for some reason didn't want to remove it because he thought he work would find out about it if he appealed). So the blame is partially on the 2 of them not only me because of their decision to not remove the CCJ.

My dsis flipped out on me and told me I'm jealous of her life (I'm a single mum) and that I deliberately tried to ruin her by not paying the fine (so I had planned for her to get a CCJ from last summer). She called me toxic and said that she is going non contact with me and will not speak to me till my dad's funeral.

Was I unreasonable to not pay the full fine in the first place ( I regularly appeal parking fines for myself and only pay for them if I can't get out if it so did the same thing for her)? Am I to blame for the CCJ or does she have some responsibility for it being issued? Also am I wrong to tell her that she could have the CCJ removed and improve her partners credit score again and has chosen not to because she can't be bothered to fill in a form?

They’re both mental. He’s clearly a knob too.

I think you have both been a bit naive tbh. As soon as the parking ticket was issued, it was nothing to do with you any more and the council would only deal with the registered keeper of the vehicle. All their letters would have gone to your BIL. The only thing you could have done was pay the fine to stop any futher action. You had no right of appeal at that stage. Only your BIL could have appealed and your issues with the visitor permits could have formed part of that appeal.

With regards to the CCJ, you would have needed to pay it within two weeks for it to be removed. It's clearly too late for that now.

So realistically you overestimated the role you were able to take but your sister and BIL have been way too passive in this. They must have ignored letter after letter and as such the damage to their credit is down to them.

Better still, they should have paid for airport parking and a hotel the night before!

You agreed to move out of your house to dog sit her pet. You didn't presumably particularly want a holiday at her house. You spend all week looking after her dog. You spend a great deal of time arranging her parking permits, albeit unsuccessfully admittedly. You give your sister your home for a night. The home she has cleverly arranged to be vacant.

Now she's angry with you.
Without all the not opening her own legal letters, your sister IBU.
You tried your best and cocked up. But seriously your sister sounds a nasty unreasonable selfish cow.
Better off without her. Maybe next year when she's paid out a grand to cover dog care, airport parking and overnight hotel she will regret her take on this. I hope you say sod off.

I think she feels I owe her because I used the opportunity of staying at her house to visit places near where she lives. I was there for a week with kids so couldn't stay at home all day with her pet so we did go out on day trips to the beach, national parks, visiting friends but it was still quite a drive from her area (about 1-2 hours) but not as much as it would have been from my area (3-5 hours). However I did not go up there for that reason and if she wasn't on holiday I would have stayed at home no issues. It's not somewhere I would have paid to go and stay but since I was there I made the most of it basically.

I have been doing research on removal of CCJs and I think you can have them set aside if you can prove that you didn't know you were issued it. This probably explains why my bil thinks his work will find out because he would need proof from them that he wasn't in the country for a few months. Either that or they have several letters that prove that they could have known about it but didn't respond.

The non contact with her personally doesn't bother me as she is bat shit crazy at the best of times (I have been accused of trying to turn my niece against her as well). But I am sad to not have contact with my dniece and dnephews as I love them and my kids are attached to them.

I don't think you are wholly to blame for them getting a CCJ. There would have been a lot of correspondence going to them about this and not opening post for weeks on end is stupid.

They were trying to avoid paying parking costs and pet sitting costs, and ultimately it is their stinginess that got them into this situation.

Most parking companies will only deal with the registered owner, not a third party. I suspect that one of the letters your sister failed to open was from the issuer telling them that the appeal from a 3rd party (you) was not acceptable. Had they opened the letter, then they might have had the opportunity to redo the appeal in their name, and include your explanation and the appeal may have been accepted. Local Councils are often more forgiving than private companies.

You can still get this squashed by writing to tge Council. It can all go away. I'd contact a Councillor and speak to them about it all.

It's worth trying to resolve it and getting your money back.

You DSis is being a twit thinking you're jealous of her....

Bloody hell, you both sound disorganised and messy.

I've never heard of anyone having so many fines and fees.

What a drama, I've gone nc with people for less that what your dsis is whinging about. I've tried to help, they've kicked me for no apparent reason and I've just said fuck you then and moved on.
My life is good as a result.

I agree that it can be easy to get undeserved parking fines and quite a process to correctly appeal them. We were fined earlier this year as "resident permit expired". That was about 2 or 3 months after we'd renewed it; they'd changed the system so we no longer received a physical permit to put in the car. Eventually we worked out that despite an email confirming payment, a few weeks later the system had decided we hadn't paid and cancelled the permit - but we weren't notified. Sending the payment confirmation email was not accepted for my first appeal of the parking fine! Once we sorted it out though it turned out we'd been overcharged for the permit and we got a refund!

I’ve learnt the hard way to be a bit more careful in keeping up with admin/paying charges when appropriate/not breaking rules and getting fined/reading those little parking notices by the side of the road and not taking someone else’s word for it all in order to not incur silly fines and charges.

As for your sister well ‘no good deed (looking after her pet) goes unpunished’ as they say.

Well you won’t be doing her any favours anymore will you!

Realistically the fine was not for your car and they would need to have submitted the evidence themselves. You could support with the evidence but it was their responsibility not yours.
Plus surely if you partner works away you have permission to open post exactly so things aren't missed.

perhaps it shouldn't have got as far as it did, but when you realised you offered to pay the CCJ thingy - she declined your offer and asked for the money.

I can't see what more you could have done. If she can't be *rsed to fill in a form it isn't your fault.

I'm extremely risk averse, I can't imagine ever asking to park for a week at a friend/family member's property unless it was on their own off street parking. I would expect that parking on a street that requires permits could potentially create all sorts of issues. Hopefully this will all blow over and I'm sorry for your loss.

You did her a massive favour, you let her stay at yours and park, you looked after her pet, and offered to pay to remover her CCJ, no you are not being unreasonable

I wouldn’t give her or her h a penny. You were doing her huge favors in the first place, free parking you paid for as far as you were able, free lodging so she’d be closer to airport, having to leave your own home with dc and stay in hers to take care of pet, etc etc. I cannot believe what I just read. You are literally her servant and personal assistant working for free and paying her. Crazy.

You purpose in existing is to make life easier, more convenient, and less expensive for her. That’s it. She uses you and then got upset when an unforeseen complication made her have to do something for herself.

I would advise no apology, no paying of fines or anything else. I would absolutely block them and never speak to them again.

They’d like you to pay for their vacation, you’ve paid for and provided everything else. Whoever voted with your frenemies is nuts.

No you are not to blame. You were doing them a favour and if they dealt with their post immediately there would not have been a CCJ. Let them go NC.

She's hard work, isn't she?

While I'd probably mouth some platitudes such as 'That's a shame, but it's your decision who you have in your life' in response to her threats to go NC, I'd probably secretly be grateful for a break from the madness.

I think you bear more responsibility for the parking fines than you seem to have accepted and a lot more responsibility for the CCJ. Though I don't think you are totally responsible for either.

Your sister blaming you for their bad credit rating now after you offered to pay to get rid of the CCJ is not reasonable. And accusing you of planning the whole fiasco it is pretty awful.

You both sound as though you rub each other up the wrong way and react to each other as though you haven't grown out of your childhood lives together. I recognise this as I'm in my 50s and only recently seem to have got out of that dynamic with my brother. I have no words of wisdom for how to do it, but I would say I wish we'd managed it earlier and I'm glad we've got over it rather going NC.

This is your SISTER? Go no contact. Block her. She should be apologizing for aggravating you to death expecting you to be her servant.

Under what terms do you think the CCJ would be removed? As far as I can see, the only reasons it can be removed is if they didn't own the debt or if the debt was paid within 1 month. Neither of these applies in this case. I can understand why they are annoyed at you. You insisted on fixing it by appealing the fines instead of just paying them, then failed to do it and also failed to keep them updated.

They sound like horrible grasping idiots.
No loss.

I'm sorry about their kids but they are going to be the same horrible grasping idiots as their parents so you are doing your kids a favour.

If you are unaware that a CCJ was issued you can have it set aside especially if you have paid the fine already. It wasn't a huge debt so the ccj could be waived potentially if they appeal it. But I know they won't.

The thing is they didn't budge from the beginning about me being responsible for paying the 3 fines which would have cost me over £100. If they had compromised a bit and each of us paid one of them (we all work) then that would have been a quick solution. Roughly £35/55 (cant remember exactly) each if paid within 14 days. But at that time of year which was end of the summer just before kids go back to school I could not just pay a £100 fine when I had so many expenses. That's why I went for the appeal first. I was relieved when they didn't contact me or dsis as I thought it meant it as cancelled. But obviously I was wrong.

It did make me regret helping in the first place. My parents live in the same city as me. They have off street parking but she chose to stay at mine because it would cost her less to catch an uber from my place then my parents. My parents did ask her at that time to leave her car at theirs so it wasn't like she didn't have that option.

My dnephews and dniece are wonderful kids. They are a credit to them.

I had no idea people chased up parking fine appeals 🤨. Anyway I think yanbu, their car their problem.