Partner just told me about £1k fine

[Ontherocksthisyear]

So my partners just nonchalantly told me he is in online court tomorrow to dispute a speeding fine. He said he told me about this fine, just before Christmas. I assumed it was about £50 so didn't really enter into much conversation about it. He's said it was £1k, which he failed to add when he originally told me. Maybe my fault for not asking at the time. We share a house together of 3 years and have an 8 month old DS. I am now pretty angry that he has only now just told me about the fine being £1k and that he's in court tomorrow. He's known this court date for 2 weeks apparently. AIBU here? He doesn't see why I am angry and said he wouldn't have been of it was the other way around and I'd of just told him this.

So he’s has committed 2 offences at least - one speeding and one not updating his address with the DVLA. He’s also hidden the severity of this from you and told you at the last possible moment that he is appearing in court. Unless you are both loaded I would say this does affect you - you are running a household and have a child together. That 1k could have been spent on a million other better things…. Yet YOU are the one HE is angry with?

Sounds a bit DARVO.

£1K just for speeding.

There's something wrong here.

I smell a rat.

I was about to say he wasn’t giving you the full story, but from your latest post I see he now has told you more. You’re definitely not unreasonable to be angry. That’s a huge amount of money. He can’t claim it doesn’t affect you when you have a child together. That’s quite a thing to have kept secret from you. It would have me wondering what else he was keeping me on a “need to know” basis about.

OK so I know you are angry BUT the exact same thing happened to me. I am normally a fairly conscientious person but I forgot to update my logbook (it’s that not the licence that they take the address from) when I moved. I missed the letter and only found out when a debt collection agency contacted me. I was very upset but managed to sort it.
The fine was around £1000 (I was doing 35 in a 30 btw which is bad but there are worse offences). The conviction was for failing to give driver details. It’s more serious than speeding and carries 6 penalty points.

I sorted it by asking them to reopen the prosecution. I pleaded guilty to speeding, got a £150 fine and 3 points and the 6 points were cancelled as was the fine.

I would say don’t be too harsh on him. It literally does happen all the time - apparently a significant number of motoring offences are made against people who don’t know about it. That’s why they allow the cases to be reopened if you can show you didn’t live at the address it was sent to at the time.

I felt like enough of a twat when it happened to me without judgement from my DP as well. Chances are he won’t end up with a £1,000 fine anyway as this was for the more serious offence.

Typical childish reaction. I hope it doesn’t affect you and you are financially disassociated with each other with Experian. But I’m not sure it works like that unless you need to get a loan or joint mortgage it can affect you in the future if he has a CCJ against him.

There is a straight out fine from the DVLA of £1000 if you don't update your V5 log book. If they haven't been able to contact him and he has admitted it is because he hasn't updated his details this will be it.

Do they arrest wages though?

This is discretionary (I didn’t get fined by the DVLA when it happened to me) and you wouldn’t be going to court to contest it. It’s probably a fine for failing to give driver details when his car was caught.

They can do. If someone hasn’t paid a debt the court can make an attachment of earnings order. Although normally you’d hear from a bailiff first because you need to know where someone works to make an order for their earnings to be garnished.

@Ontherocksthisyear they would not have taken £1k straight from his wages!! there is a set scale of fees for legitimate deductions and this does not come near it. how would the courts know his employee number?

Dh ended up with a fine in the post for £1200 or something like that, no court attendance at that point. He didn’t mention it to me until probably a week later when we were out driving somewhere together.
The fine was from when a woman crashed into the side of his van - can’t remember now why the fine came through but he sorted it out in the end and didn’t need to pay. Even if he had, it would have been his problem not mine!
If it was something that was going to affect family finances then yes it would have been something we discussed at the time but as it stood it was only going to come out of his pocket not mine. Not really my business.

I was caught in a similar situation, for doing 33 mph 10 metres before the limit went up to 40 mph by a mobile camera.
Despite my car and licence being registered to the correct address, the letter never reached me. The first I knew about it was the court summons. My local post had been raised in the House of Commons as appalling, the entire court process was dealt with via email not post, and by the time the court costs and victim surchage (!) was included it cost over £2000. Bitter, moi?

If he's lying to you about this, what else is he lying about?

Surely it affects you if you’re living as one household and raising a child together? Unless you have completely separate finances.

If you value the relationship I would say to him:

"babe you're a twit but the most important thing is that you are honest with me... don't keep stuff from me because otherwise I don't know if Im going to be blindsided one day. I need to be able to trust you."

Then it's really important to stay calm in future when he tells you things.

Has he updated his driving licence, insurance details and bank details?

If not, the first two are offences.

He's committing an offence by having the wrong address on his driving licence and his insurance could possibly be invalid as postcode etc is part of the insurance policy. risk changes depending where you live.

He could be driving uninsured.

Is he stupid over this kind of thing or just lazy?

£1k isn’t that much money so I wouldn’t be overly upset about that. I’m significantly more concerned about how rudely he’s speaking to you, and how this essentially was left to fester for 3 years. You’re supposed to be a unit.

It doesn’t necessarily seem like he’s admitting any liability to you but I would keep a sceptical eye. I reckon he probably was aware, thought he could ignore it and it escalated.

Paperwork was sent to old address.

Does DVLA have his correct address?

£1k isn’t that much money

For you maybe.....

I mean for me it is a decent amount of money, but my point was I wouldn’t start an argument over that amount. As in given the length of time that has elapsed, I’m not surprised it tallied up to that much.

I think it depends on whether you have shared finances. You don't mention that clearly in your OP.

He’s lying to you. The fine didn’t ’build up’ to £1000. He’s been fined for a combination of the speeding fine and the DVLA fining him for not updating his licence for three years. The fine and resulting points on his licence are issued by DVLA and if they’ve had to trace him that will attract a fine and added costs. He’s an idiot for taking it to court because he’ll lose and then court costs will be added too.

That kind of behaviour is irresponsible at any point in your life, but even more so when you have family responsibilities. Of course it will affect you, it’s joint income. It could have resulted in bailiffs turning up at your door. And if you share a bank account or loans/credit you’re financially linked. It could affect you when you come to get credit or a mortgage. The fact that he doesn’t consider you to be affected is a red flag - means he hasn’t thought it through, and if l were you l’d be wondering what else he doesn’t consider my business.

That looks more like avoiding the problem - and now the fine has escalated. He's lying about this. The original offence has to be more than just speeding as well - a £100 fine doesn't just jump to 1k because you miss the pay date, it doubles (i.e. I got a £70 fine for going into a bus lane (totally lost in DD's town - grrrr!) but I paid £35 because I paid at once. Sounds fishy, OP.

£1k isn’t that much money so I wouldn’t be overly upset about that.

You have to be joking with that. It's 10 times what it needed to be, or tbh it needn't have been a fine at all if he'd kept his details up to date.

That's an entire month's wages for some people, mortgage payment, annual holiday etc. I can only think you're goading posting that on there and pretending not to realise that.

If it's got as far as an attachment of earnings which has happened and his is now disputing, it's been going on far longer than just before Christmas.
Christmas 2024 anyway.