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?

I've gained a few parking tickets over the years. And they always advise you to pay them straight away even if you are going to appeal. If you win the appeal the cost of the ticket gets reinbursed.

So YABU not to pay them straight away, this has all escalated in a ridiculous fashion due to you and them.

I don't think it's fair for you to be accused of being disorganised especially since you have explained how you got the tickets. I had never had one ever and then my hubby took our new car to work gave the registration to the car park people and we got 9 fines in all at once because the person forgot to upload the new registration. Honestly I have never panicked so much in my life. I then got another after leaving the hospital after visiting my mum hitting a pot hole in the hospital roads and bursting my tyre, I managed to get to a local shop car park and phoned for recovery. In the pics that got sent in the parking fine you can actually see my car being loaded on to the recovery truck and we got another one for going in a bus lane as advised from the signs on the road due to another road being closed, luckily I pre-empted the councils disorganisation of their roads and took a pic to prove this should it come back on us and it did. These were all appealed and sorted, the 9 took a bit longer but I did chase it up A LOT. Which you probably should of done too. But getting fines doesn't make you disorganised, all of these ones were outwith our control.

But you are not being unreasonable, you let them stay at your house, park on your street (my neighbours let their parents do this and use one of the visitor spaces for two weeks which pisses me and other neighbours off that a car sits there for 2 weeks and doesn't move taking up a visitor space for someone else - we don't pay for permits) travelled to look after their dog leaving your house empty and arranged their parking for them too. The amount of time you took out your week to arrange the parking and look after the dog tell them where to go. Your husband goes away for work you don't let the mail pile up you should be able to trust one another with each others mail especially in that situation. I don't think your being unreasonable at all. They have just made a mug out of you.

Her car her fines. I would have told her this pretty clearly right away 🤷🏻‍♀️

Similar to the PP who called your DSis a drama llama - I dont think she really is addicted to helping, I think she is addicted to being a victim so constantly sets up situations where she can feel like this. As such, nothing you can do to avoid this.

It's probably been mentioned already but once a CCJ I'd paid, it's updated as 'satisfied' but would not be removed from his credit file. That's scuppered now for 6 years.

YANBU. Enjoy the peace and quiet while she is NC. I hope she behaves herself at your Dad's funeral. [Flowers]

I put YABU you said you’d look after their car and you didn’t.

You cannot pay to remove a CCJ, you can only pay to settle it so companies looking at your credit rating can see the debt has been paid off. I had a similar situation with a parking ticket and it is one of my biggest regrets because it was on my credit file for 6 years and it stopped us getting a mortgage with a mainstream lender. I’d be pissed off if I were her but to be honest, she should have sorted the parking fines herself and asked you to reimburse her.

I would say there's blame on both sides here. You were trying to do her a favour in the first place but should have made sure the permits were sorted. She should have paid the fines straightaway. The fact that it has escalated is entirely her/her DH's fault.

Tell her to get a life and sort out the situation, the car was her responsibility. What's done is done, forget about it. There are too many much deeper issues to be concerned about. Sorry about the money issue, you have done your best.

Thank you for the responses. Just to clarify my dad is alive and well thankfully but is elderly. She just meant she won't speak to me or see me again unless its at my dads funeral which to be honest is quite a morbid and horrible thing to say. I do feel bad about the ccj but I know for a fact that it would not have got to that point overnight. From the date of the fines in August to when the ccj was issued was about 6 or 7 months. If they did not get contacted in that time they could have it set aside. So that is important to establish. But I suspect that is not the case which is why she isn't bothering to appeal it.

You CANNOT get a CCJ removed unless it is settled in full within 30 days of judgement. After that time you can pay in full and it will be marked as satisfied. This is not a removal and the CCJ will remain on your file for 6 years.

Oh c’mon - she chose to park at yours rather than at your parent’s which has off road parking claiming the Uber would cost less -suggests your parents had refused knowing what she’s like.

You sound disorganised and didn’t sort things out properly and so are partly to blame but so are they and they don’t sound like very nice people. Ditch them and forget about it.

Maybe if you had been at YOUR home, instead of staying at your SISTER's house to look after HER cat, then there would not have been a mix up with the parking in the first place.

I'd work out how much it costs in cat sitter/boarding kennels fees plus airport parking.
If it's anything like prices in my area then the parking fine is most definitely less.

Tell your sister to do one...

They left their car in an area that required a permit, it was their responsibility to make sure their car had the necessary documents to avoid a fine. Once tickets had been issued it was their responsibility to ensure they were paid or appealed, yes you agreed to sort it but they should have checked that everything was in hand. They are also responsible for checking their post.

They sound like entitled CF’s. They used your house for free accommodation and parking, despite this being a considerable inconvenience to you having to sort their parking permit on a daily basis, they also used you for free dog sitting. When they got the parking tickets they should have just paid them and used the money they had saved on a hotel, airport parking and a dog sitter. Tight twats!

This is why I avoid doing ‘favours’ it’s more hassle than it’s worth.

An employer won’t be notified of a CCJ for an employee as a matter of course, but if your BIL were to apply for a job, a CCJ would likely show up on any checks the employer does as part of the recruitment process. In addition, if he works in a financially sensitive industry there may well be a clause in his contract which would make falling into debt/CCJs a sacking offence. But I would have thought that if any of this applied to him, he would have had the CCJ removed.

This. They sound like hard work. I got to the part where you said that she does favours for people which she regrets, and alarm bells started ringing. Sounds like Dsis doesn’t think things through and when they go wrong she looks for a scapegoat. If she carries on bringing it up, do a bit of research into how much it would have cost for boarding kennels and airport parking. You’ll probably find that when you deduct the cost of the fine, they owe you money !!

I fully agree.

There's asking for favours, then there's taking liberties.

This falls firmly into the category of the latter. She involved you in a scheme costing minimal expenditure for her and maximum inconvenience to you, stuck her head in the sand when it had undesirable consequences she wasn't anticipating, and would now like to place the entirety of the blame and expenditure for those consequences yourself.

It's in your name, true, but why couldn't she have taken the responsibility of applying for her own permit? You're her sister, not her paid PA. I wonder if she paid your own travel and expenses for staying at her own place to pet sit for a week?

Her melodramatic declaration of NC 'until your father's funeral' is not only absurd, but insulting to your father.

DSis took you for a mug and IMO you can do without her histrionics. She will just have to get happy again, and in future take responsibility for her own parking permits and pet care.

If she doesn't, that's on her.

I mean letters to do with unpaid debts etc normally quite obvious to spot when they come through the post... if he's away for that long, she should be at least sending him a pic of envelope saying can I open this...

They can't put full blame on you when they literally decided to cop out being an adult by putting the whole issue onto you to sort and then ignored the letters...
It wasn't in your name so why would the council have even responded to you..

The fines were sent to her sister so obviously gdpr doesn't allow her to be given any information regarding the fines I would say 50/50 blame more so the sister if they don't open mail

I had a similar parking setup so I’d rest and how it works.

you are in control of this from an admin perspective, but your sister. If you had issues on day 1 you simply needed to phone the council.

This is on you. If you sorted this out to start with it wouldn’t ever have escalated.

It sounds like you have a strange approach to parking and playing chicken with it anyway haha.

Sorry to hear your relationship has been impacted as a result though, that’s sad. Hopefully she will come round.

However I am in agreement. If anyone who said I could leave my car and they’d sort the permits, then didn’t, I wouldn’t be too impressed.