Solicitor from house move wants £1800 a year later. Just received county court claim form. Help!

[Areyounot]

I am hoping someone can help navigate this rather confusing situation.

We purchased a house 18 months ago and the solicitors and other fees were paid from the proceeds of the previous house sale. I received an invoice on the day of the house sale and confirmed this is the amount we owed.

5 months later I received a call from the solicitors telling me I owed them £1800. They had no idea what this amount was for, except that it is from the mortgage company, so contact them directly.

I did, they told me that it was a mistake and it will be removed, I then told the solicitors what the mortgage company had said, and thought it was settled.

I then received a phone call from them a month later stating we still owed this money and I needed to speak to the mortgage company.

Again, I spoke to them and this time they told me it was for early exit mortgage fees for the old house. I had no idea of these charges as I thought we had ported the mortgage over to the new house. The house sale and purchase was a long process over 10 months.

I asked them to check the phone call recording I had previously made ,as the mortgage company had already confirmed to me it was a mistake. They came back and told me the phone was not recorded as the line dropped and the advisor called me back. They then told me the solicitor was liable as they had not done their due diligence.

I told the solicitor this and let them know I would be sending a letter of complaint. Which I did twice and heard nothing back.

Today I have received a claim form through the post from the county court. They particulars of the claim state “ the claimant settled the amount with the mortgage company at the advice of the claimants governing body” the governing body I presume being the SRA.

Our financial circumstances have dramatically changed in the past year, due to me being diagnosed with lupus and 2 pulmonary embolisms, I have had to cut my hours dramatically (self employed) so have lost one wage and I am in the process of claiming PIP’s.

My husband has also had some health problems and is a contractor so his wage has been up and down whilst he has been waiting for his operation.

Currently our outgoings are more then our incomings and we our living off credit cards as our savings and emergency fund has now disappeared.

So my questions are,

Do we have any chance of fighting this in court?

Do I accept liability, fill in the incoming and outgoings form and offer £10 a month?

Can the £10 a month be rejected from the claimant? If so what then?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Your solicitor will have contacted the mortgage company for a redemption statement. If they didn't include the early repayment fee, that is not negligence by your solicitor as they tried to argue. It doesn't prevent them from claiming the debt (assuming it exists), but the Financial Ombudsman may order them to pay compensation. However, I am surprised they want an early exit fee if the mortgage for your new house is with the same lender. I would start with the lender. Make it clear that you understood the mortgage was being ported to your new property and therefore no early exit fee was payable. You therefore want them to refund the incorrect payment to your solicitor in full. If necessary, go through their complaints procedure. If that doesn't get you anywhere, you can refer the matter to the Financial Ombudsman.

While that is going on, contact your solicitor and explain what is happening. Point out to them that you have had no response to your complaint and that there has been no contact from them for a year until taking this to court. In particular, point out that there was no letter before action as required by the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct. Ask them to withdraw their action.

If you did accept liability and offered £10 a month, they could reject this. It would then be up to the court to decide how you should pay.

Thank you so much for your detailed reply.

The mortgage lender has confirmed to me that they did include the charge on the redemption statement, but for some reason the solicitors missed this charge. I have not seen evidence of this however.

Even if they included it, I would still question why it is being charged when the mortgage for your new house is with the same lender.

I'd start with a subject access request to the solicitor. Get a copy of your full file so you can see exactly what happened.

I reckon you would stand a very good chance in court, particularly due to the rather iffy fact of the recorded phone call having been 'lost'.

Conduct any future exchanges regarding this by email if possible (because written trail). If you must do things by phone, use a phone app like Voice Recorder (using two devices - there is no reliable app that records both sides of a convo on the phone you are using. Put your phone on speaker, record on another device). Yes you are not supposed to record, but you are using this as an aide memoire initially.....

Did you keep the same mortgage rate OP? Are you sure you ported? I'm not sure on timings but usually there's a time limit between sale and completion of new purchase (3 or 6 months) and you can't port beyond that. The ten month timescale is jumping out at me.

If I've misunderstood and you sold old house/completed on new house at same time ignore me!

Thank you all for replying.

can I just ask if anybody knows, if we accept liability to avoid court, what is the likely amount the court will order we pay each month? Also will that result in a CCJ?

Without knowing a lot of detail about your finances, no-one can offer a sensible guess. And yes, that will result in a CCJ. You want to avoid this going to court if at all possible, either by persuading the solicitor to hold back or by settling with them.

@Areyounot Have you considered doing an SAR to both mortgage company and solicitor asking for the redemption statement and communications.

I have sent he the solicitor an email today so I will see if they get back to me.

I will contact SAR again tomorrow and ask them.

I am concerned now that I only have 14 days to answer to the court. I absolutely do not want a CCJ against our name.

I did not know that if you accept liability it results in a CCJ! Seems your damed either way. I am not legally savvy, so going up against a solicitor in court does not seem sensible.

what is the only way to avoid a CCJ in my case?

Just to clarify my last response, if you agree a repayment plan with the solicitor there will be no CCJ. However, if the solicitor takes it to court and the court orders a repayment plan, you will have a CCJ against you.

Cross posted.

The only ways to avoid a CCJ are to pay in full, or agree a repayment plan with the solicitor, or persuade the solicitor to hold off on legal action, or get the court to agree that you don't owe this money. This would be a small claim so the fact you would be going up against a solicitor should not disadvantage you.

Do please emphasise to the solicitor that you haven't heard from them for over a year, and they have not sent a letter before action, so are in breach of the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct. That might get them to hold off for a bit. Also raise with them the fact they haven't responded to your complaints and that, if the mortgage lender is correct, they were negligent in not paying this money at the time of your house sale.

As per my previous posts, I would also ask the mortgage lender why they are attempting to collect an exit charge when you ported the mortgage to your current property. I think their initial response that this was an error is likely to be correct, in which case they should refund the money to your solicitor.

Just got a reply from the solicitor. I asked they they hold off on action as I didn’t receive any correspondence and have opened a complaint with the legal ombudsman.

They told me I am using bullying tactics?! And they have sent 4 letters in the past year. This has got to be absolute lie and I am wondering if I should ask for proof. They have also told me that I can’t make a complaint to SAR or the legal ombudsman as it’s been over a year! God what a shit show.

It's not bullying to expect solicitors to follow correct procedures. They're taking the piss - I wouldn't accept liability for any of this. Tell them you want prof that they have sent and you have received 4 letters! You'd think they'd send numbers 3 and 4 recorded delivery if this was true

I replied back to this asking for proof of the letters.

they also added this to the end of the email

“I want to remind you that your Defence contains a statement of truth.”

any clue to what that means?

To me that sounds like they are accusing you of lying!

Wouldn't it be nice if solicitors wrote in straightforward language, so people don't have to guess what they mean?

This is what gets me! The email was so convoluted when it didn’t need to be.
It’s clear this guy (who I have never dealt with before) it using big words to scare me. Trouble is it’s working.

I have no idea what to do. I’m starting with a Lupus flare from the bloody stress now!

@Areyounot you are confusing SRA and SAR

SRA = Solicitor’s Regulatory Authority

SAR = Subject Access Request

A SAR will give you copies of the letters and redemption figure document etc

The SRA will look at whether the solicitor has abided by their Code of Conduct.

I would write to them one more time (via email for the paper trail) reiterate that mortgage company have told you this is a mistake and that you are investigating. If it turns out that you genuinely owe this money, of course you will pay it. However, you have not received any correspondence from them prior to court proceedings and you politely request a copy of all paperwork they hold on your file, including proof of having sent 4 letters.
Say that you are requesting a copy of the file held by the mortgage company and therefore ask they defer court proceedings until you have had the opportunity to review the paperwork.

If they insist on court, you can demonstrate your reasonable correspondence with all parties and their unwillingness to assist.

If you have an app for your mortgage company it should show sun accounts for each mortgage product do you could see if the old mortgage was ported over. On mine I can see I have 2 separate sub accounts, one from my old ported mortgage and one for the additional borrowing. Might help to show if it's gone through properly.

Statement of truth in your Defence (or any other pleading) means when you sign it the contents must be truthful or you are committing contempt of court. But basically as long as your Defence isn't untruthful that is fine. Solicitor is trying to to bully and intimidate you by inferring they think you will lie in your defence. You aren't going to (I assume) so you're fine.

I would say put in a defence within the time limit. It will buy you some time because the court can't then order a judgement yet, probably not for months. It won't stop you admitting liability later or settling the claim later (with or without admission). Don't admit liability now or you'll have a ccj. Don't fail to put in a defence either as that will mean judgement in default (a ccj).

Your defence will be you paid what was advised by sols at the time and can prove it. Put them to proof over why they advised you one sum and later pursued another. Include that you have put in a complaint to the sol firm and the FOS (both prior to these proceedings) and also that the sol has not completed the Pre Action Protocol process and the legal claim should be stayed until all those steps are exhausted.

Then you will have time to find out more about what happened from mortgage lenders and the sol firm (SARs etc) and negotiate. I bet the sols will discontinue the claim because the more time it takes up the more their lost earnings will be - more than 1800. They've handled this really badly and now they are panicking, calling YOU a bully, ridiculous!

I'm a solicitor by the way.

Wow this is crazy

I bought and sold my house with the same solicitor / a year later said solicitor rang me up to say I hadn’t paid them as the selling solicitor - I said no problem - I’ll give you their / your number.

They told me to forget the conversation ever happened!