Our debtor implying harassment

[franckiesmum]

I'm not sure really where to post this really but am hopefully in the right place.

My husband's ex partner owes him around £7000 for expenses incurred on a property they jointly owned.

He's written to her several times over the past 3 months asking her to speak to him about how she intends to pay him back. The letters have always been polite, to the point, and have never made any reference to her personally. He has also offered mediation or asked her to provide a solicitor as a contact so they don't have to speak directly. She has ignored them.

He has sent two letters in the past month telling her if she doesn't at least enter into some dialogue with him, he won't have any option but to take her to court to recover the debt. She has ignored them.

She is trying to keep under the radar in terms of where she lives so he has employed a tracing company to find her address so we can serve the papers. She currently uses a number of addresses and has post office redirection on them so she can't be found.

Now she has texted him using the word harassment several times and that she has asked a Women's Aid organisation to protect her against him and they have solicitors standing by should his harassment continue. She said if he finds her address, she will make sure the police are made aware of it. She is very clever and tells a really good story.

Now, if she owed money to a utility or mortgage company, she'd have been dragged through the courts by now but my husband now feels he is being victimised for trying to recoup his money. He has never harassed her or anyone and for her to use that tactic is utterly deplorable.

We aren't sure what our next move should be.

I believe harassment is a legal term, and is any behaviour that "causes distress or alarm", so technically on that basis, she would be correct.

So, really the only thing your DH can do is to take her to court for the money, and state in the papers that he did try to work towards an amicable solution, but she chose not to do so.

Small Claim in England are for any debt less than £10k, so as long as he can prove the debt, I would suggest that's the way forward.

Thank you. It's a bad job that someone who clearly owes you money is able to hide under an umbrella of harassment just because you ask them for it back. He thought by writing to her that it would result in some kind of resolution plus the courts would see that he had tried to make every attempt to resolve the matter. You are both right in that he now needs to remove himself from the situation and let it take it's course through the courts.