Shout out to anyone sold a Novitas litigation loan by their family solicitors.
Please share your experience below, get in touch via private message, and check out the Financial Ombudsman Service Website to see what is happening re these loans.
Novitas has closed to new borrowers, there are multiple decisions now on the FOS website finding that the loans were unfair and unaffordable at the outset, in them most serious cases there are elements of fraud.
Here's a list of issues you can check:
- Was your income (not assets) sufficient to repay the loan when it was taken out
- Was the loan secured on your half of the home
- Did you receive genuinely independent legal advice on the loan, was there any payment made by you for independent legal advice? Was the 'independent legal adviser' paid via the litigation loan?
- Could your case have been resolved via mediation without a need to go to court?
- Were you provided with a 'living expenses' loan, solicitors and litigation lenders could only sell these loans to pay solicitors legal fees, they could not use the loans as a piggy bank to pay your day to day expenses out side of solicitors fees.
- Were you married or was it a TOLATA case?
- Were you told you had to take out insurance with their insurer in order to get the loan.
If any of the above applies, a search on the FOS decisions (both upheld and not up held) will give you a guide as to what you need to do.
Hope this helps the Mumsnet community.