was elderly relative evicted unlawfully? lost house and all contents

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An elderly relative who owned her own home and was still paying off her mortgage was evicted last year, making her homeless. She was placed in temporary sheltered accommodation and has since been moved to a small property.

Her house, including all her belongings, furniture, personal effects was put on the market and she was told to sign a form to say that it would now belong to the council. It appears to have been sold on right move. I think she was offered the chance to go back and retrieve anything just after she was evicted but she was in shock and could't face it, probably hoping that the problem would get solved and she could go back.

I am the only person she is in contact with but she won't tell me her address so I can;t go and visit her.

Her mental health wasn't great to begin with but it has deteriorated rapidly and she seems to be depressed and perhaps suffering from PTSD. She is terrified of opening the door, answering the phone, going out. She is having nightmares and panic attacks. She has various health issues which are not getting seen to as she has lost trust in people.

This is all I know.

I feel heartbroken for her. This is a woman who has lost her house and entire life belongings and has nothing left but the clothes she was wearing. I realise that there must have been financial problems but still, I can't get over the fact that her whole life's memories have gone and she has lost her house.

I don't know how I can help her but does this sound lawful? If anyone has any advice, I'd be very grateful.

Thank you for reading.

If you put the Rightmove link on here maybe someone can do some investigating for you.

Ok, so I’ve found out that she is still registered as the owner of the property.

There are also 2 things listed under Charges but dated back 20 years ago.

Thank you @Soontobe60 but it may be too outing.

I believe there is another form you can fill in that relates to pending changes.

The basic £7 land registry documents will show you who owned it and who the mortgage is with and who bought it. That is where you start.

also try the individual insolvency register
https://www.insolvencydirect.bis.gov.uk/eiir/
or, if historic try the gazette.
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+gazette&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari&sei=Ppi1avylEPK7hbIPqcvmmAE&dlnr=1&iga=1&utm_campaign=safari_share_1

It may add more pieces of the puzzle and mean you won’t need to ask her these tricky questions.

Sad tale OP - you’re obviously very worried. But at least she’s housed.

Check the insolvency register - the gov.uk one. Also the Gazette . m.thegazette.co.uk/insolvency

Nothing appearing on the insolvency register or the gazette.

Are you sure the person you are texting is actually your relative? Is it the same phone number that they have always used?

Okay that’s useful OP.

The Land Registry phone line opens at 8am ask them if there is anything pending against the title number/s.

what did you get from the Title docs on the land registry £7 check ? If you let us know ‘in general ‘ (if worried about identifying info) for example Mortgage company /owned in her name / sold to a company .. type of thing

Its taking a long time for the Land Registry to be updated at the moment BUT its probably one of the holders of a charge that took action against your relative

Is it possible that she’s actually in a care home, and that the council took possession of her property to sell it and pay the care home fees? EDITED to say that I’ve just read this is not possible during her lifetime…

It sounds highly unlikely that she’d have a mortgage in her late 70s so I think she must be a bit muddled up?

The only other time when the council could, in theory, take possession of her property is if she lived in a leasehold property, the council was the freeholder and she hadn’t paid her service charges. The breach of lease/ forfeiture could lead to the council taking her property, but this is extremely unlikely. The mortgage company would normally pay the service charges and add the debt to the mortgage (if cl had a mortgage), otherwise it’s likely she’d end up with a charging order, not at order for sale.

i think the truth is very different from what she’s telling you.

Pure speculation for how something like this might feasibly happen:

The bit she's probably not telling you is that she ran up tens of thousands of pounds of debt - potentially from gambling or from loan sharks.

If she couldn't keep up with repayments then creditors would be able to successfully get a judgement against her that her only significant asset - her home - should be forced to sale to pay off her debts.

If her name is on the deed are you sure she isn't still living in the property? She may have lied to you, if she's broken contact with other members of the family I assume there are some issues. It's possible there are debt problems though.

who owned her own home and was still paying off her mortgage was evicted last year,

This doesnt make sense
You dont own it if you have a mortgage.
If you are paying the mortgage you dont get evicted.

If you fail to pay your mortgage you have
A. Months and months of warning
B. Equity which can be used to rent... hire removal men... hire storage facilities.

You dont havw rhe full story.

I don't know what that means in this case but it sounds like asking the Land Registry about the situation and your concerns and then possibly seeking advice from a conveyancing solicitor might be the way to go although you will probably be limited in what you can do without her direct involvement and co-operation.

But if it does look like fraud, perhaps action fraud or whatever they're called these days might be able to help. There might be some links in the podcast show notes.

As an aside, there are lots of scam sites that charge fees for putting information into free or cheap government services websites, they pay to come at the top of Google searches so good that you've dodged this con before committing.

Such a sad tale OP but nothing you’ve said so far sounds illegal.

Lots of things could have caused the eviction.

The charges on her property are relevant. They could be charges from the mortgage company or they could be secured debts or a Charging Order following a CCJ.

If there is a Charging order on the property, the Creditor can apply for a Possession Order which could, if she’s still not communicating and making a sensible offer, lead to eviction.

The fact that she says it’s the Council is also interesting. Do you think it could be unpaid Council Tax?

Councils previously used to apply to make people bankrupt if the Council Tax was unpaid and the person owned their own home. Bankruptcy is expensive so now they apply for a CCJ, Charging Order and then ask for a Possession Order.

All of these steps she will have been warned about and all of them would have had some signposting for free legal advice.

I know people are saying that people in their eighties don’t have mortgages but I can assure you there are some very unscrupulous mortgage companies and I’ve come across more than one person her age with a mortgage.

It is also normal for the organisation who arranged for the eviction to give her two weeks to empty the property. As you said “she had her head in the sand”.

Unfortunately this isn’t their problem and what are they supposed to do? They’re not going to delay the sale when the equity is needed to pay off the debt and they’re not going to pay for storage when it looks as though she hasn’t been talking to them throughout the whole process. And it is a long process. She will have had many letters and lots of opportunities to avoid what has happened.

I do feel for her and wonder if she’s always been a bit like this or her cognition may be in decline?

If she continues to refuse to tell you where she is though I can imagine what help you can offer would be very limited

How long ago was this sold, the land registry updates between 2 - 6 months,?

if no charges, then I think it is likely your relative is not fully functioning and you don’t know much of the story at all. Are you sure she is not in care?

I do agree with this. It’s possible that she is is Council Property. She may have had a SW who arranged for her to go into something like a flat in a Sheltered Housing Scheme.

interest only mortgage without repayment possibility (life insurance)?

If the charges are still there then they haven't been satisfied, i.e. paid off if they were loans secured against the house. The Land Registry takes months, sometimes years, to update the publicly available information on the register and her showing as the owner does not mean the house wasn't sold.

If it was repossession by the mortgage lender then the listing would have included this information. If a lender forced the sale to recover a debt I'm not sure whether that would show in a Rightmove listing. It would probably have to have been a court ordered sale following legal proceedings and a court case.

It sounds as though your relative has considerable mental health issues from what you've posted. Unfortunately it's too late to stop her losing her house. For anyone facing repossession by a lender, it's important that the correct legal steps are followed and Citizens Advice Bureau can intervene and get a hold put on repossession proceedings in certain circumstances, e.g. if there are payments outstanding to give the person time to get the money together.

I would add that she probably didn't engage in the process and possibly didn't have capacity. There's going to be a lot more to this that you don't know. The neighbours may know more/be able to help?

I agree with PP that it sounds as if your relative has mental health problems. And as she is in her 80s she may have dementia. People with dementia commonly ignore and hide debt issues.

My mother had dementia and she hid ‘worrying’ letters about money owing. I had LPA so if she didn't hand them over to me I tended to find and deal with them anyway. But it was only when she moved to a care home and I cleared her flat that I found several letters from HMRC about unpaid tax. She could easily have told her accountant, or me, but she hid them because the sight of letters from HMRC were too big and scary to deal with.

If she hadn’t had a relative with LPA none of her debt problems would have been dealt with. So as others have said it is entirely possible your relative ignored multiple warnings and was simply unable to deal with the situation.

I think the story you got is definitely not the full story OP -and this person is hugely embarrassed and hence the not wanting to be upfront or has big mental issues after sticking their head in the sand - Is it a relative you feel you really need to help ? Mother, aunt, sister etc? Because it’s very hard to help someone who won’t give you a full story , even if you aren’t judging -

I’d be going around to the house, knocking the door and asking the new owner if they could tell me anything. Then while I was there I’d ask the neighbours too