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.

Are you 100% sure it’s not a scam. Email addresses are easily faked.

Actually that is a really good point. Solicitors’ emails are targeted by scammers, because they often involve financial transactions.

Have you spoken to anyone at the firm recently, OP? Or only emailed?

I'm a solicitor and I'm appalled at the language in the emails sent to you.

As others have advised, you need to file at Court and serve the Claimant with an Acknowledgment of Service and a Defence. Keep your Defence factual, not emotional. Use headings. Set out the background to the matter in chronological order and the relevant dates. Reference the recent communications from the solicitor.

The owner appears to be incredibly unprofessional. However, I still maintain that you should make a formal Subject Access Request to him. He is legally obliged to provide you a copy of your file of conveyancing papers, including all communications between him, the lender and you.

If he refuses to provide your full, in accordance with GDPR, then you must make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsmen Service... www.legalombudsman.org.uk/

*file

As well as this, make sure you put in your Defence that, unless admitted, you deny each and every allegation in the Particulars of Claim. Because if you don't deny it all, you can be seen to admit.

Hi everyone, it’s the OP with a different user name! I can’t log back into my account for some reason.

Thought I would give you all a quick update.

so I defended the claim and sent a lot of evidence in. I received on Friday a letter from the solicitor telling me that he is applying to the court for a multi track and that he will be applying his fees of £255+ vat to the original amount as the claims I have made have been fraudulent and the “the hours charged will rack up considerably” and I have 7 days to pay off the balance.

I have looked into this I can only see this being done for extremely large claims, not £1800. Is this guy trying to intimidate me again?!

the county court is calling me back to clarify as the lady on the phone wasn’t sure herself.

Have you contacted the SRA and complained about them? You need to shit them up as they're doing you.

I also think the 10 month timescale you took to complete is why you may not have ported. There is a 6 month timescale.

You could complain to your lender and ask to see the change in contract. However you presumably signed that contract and you should have read it carefully first.

You need to respond to court or it will go against you in absence of response. I think I'd admit fault if you signed the amended document and offer £25 a month. This will at least show you are trying to pay it back. I'm not sure what would happen if that is not accepted but £10 will be rejected for sure. Also remember there is often 8 percent interest up to the point it gets to court and a judgement made that usually gets added.

There is no way he will get the claim allocated to multi track, that is for large or very complex claims. It will stay in the small claims and he will not be able to claim cost (subject to a small amount). What have you had from the court since ?the claim begun, after you had the claim form?

Solicitor here by the way, baffled by how another solicitor is behaving this way.

I'm another lawyer appalled by the way this solicitor is behaving.

I can see no way he is going to get this allocated to the multi track. He is talking nonsense to try to intimidate you in relation to costs.

This isn't a multi track claim by any means. He's talking rubbish.

I wouldn't rely on court staff for advice. They're very much administrators and won't be able to advise you. Look at the Civil Procedure Rules online which set out everything you need to know.

Did you make a Subject Access Request to the solicitor as suggested? Hopefully the correspondence and documents in his file will have shed some light on how this situation has arisen.