In my ongoing battles with Halifax I have discovered a number of problems that I think that they face in persuing me for the shortfall.

1) They have no Money Order Judgement and say that they do not have the Mortgage Deeds. If I want these I should obtain them from the Land Registry as they are held with the Title Deeds. They are not willing to "obtain" these for me as it would cost money. Is it not true that if they have a) No Money Order Judgement and b) No Mortgage Deeds that they have No Case for me to answer.

2) My ex-wifes Salary has been ammended (the ammendment dated) after I had signed and dated the initial mortgage application in order. This was a mortgage subsidy that my wife was to recieve, but they have stated "No confirmation of this was either requested or recieved". - Fraud?

3) Despite my attempts to obtain Lending Criteria for 1988 they constantly refuse as I am sure that this will show that we did not have enough income to meet their lending criteria and I had only been in my employment at that time for 1 week! - Negligence?

4) 1988 MIG They have quoted Woolwich v Brown in their defence, but I am not convinced. I feel that I was mislead at mortgage inception. - Misselling?

5) Forwarding address sent to branch. Numerous letters sent to me following at Mortgaged Property Address, but only two or three to me at my forwarding address. Two key documents sent to the mortgaged address where my ex-wife was still living, was a) Notice that the Transfer had not been sucessful and b) Notice of Sale. - Negligence?

6) They have no Proof of Mailing or Proof of Delivery for the Notice of Sale. (Probably because they never posted it to an address that they had just sold and had the Letterbox secured with screws). The Building Societies Act clearly states "to last known address via recorded delivery". - Breach of the BS Act 1986?

7) They have failed to provide two independent valuations. They have only supplied their Valuation Report. It states that one Valuation was made by the selling agent and the other by IHV. I assume this means "In House Valuation" or "Internal Halifax Valuation". How can these be independent? - Negligence?

8) They have provided two Agent Reports. One in 1998 with a value shortfall of £24,000 and then another in 2000 with a shortfall listed of £27,000. All of the "Statements of Account" that have been provided show the latter amount when the last transaction on the account was dated before 1998. How can this be - Is this Fraud?

9) On a Possessions Report from the Regulatory Risk Dept (who dealt with my SAR) my forwarding address has been "whited out". On the Possessions Report (earlier date) provided to me from my "paper file" by the Collections Dept it is clearly shown. This witholding of Information would, considering point 5 above, I believe only be for the purposes of damaging my defence - Fraud?

10) From the paperwork provided it would seem that shorltly before the reposession my ex-wife was visited by "White Horse Mortgage Services". Both of their reports show a value of £48,000. The property sold 6 months later for £37,000. Negligence?

11) The Posessions report shows only one reason for default of 8. This is imprisonment. I have never been to prison and to my knowledge neither has my ex-wife. This report is in two flavours,one has my name only (ex-wifes name and details "Whited Out" when SAR was served) and the other in both names provided by the Colllections department. I consider this information to be extremely defamatory. - Defamation of Charcter?

Is it time to hit them with all of these, and if so what sort of a reaction should I expect. Any comments on this would be welcome.

-- Tim Heath (tim@computerlogistix.freeserve.co.uk), January 12, 2001

Answers

Excellent work Tim. Well done for having the gumption to serve a SARN and to work through the results.

I would *not* hit them with what you've got. I would wait for them to serve a writ on you and then respond to the summons with a defence and counterclaim. If it gets this far you may need a lawyer to help you draft the document but it's pretty straightforward. I strongly recommend that you read the Who Helps? | Books that Help section and buy the Litigation Handbook as recommended their for details on counterclaims.

What I would now do is:

1. make a complaint to the DPC about the instances of whiting out 2. write to Halifax to ask them to document each claim they make about you in the documentation they have sent you. Do not be specific about individual claims just say you want documentation/proof of "all claims". However, there is one claim you should single out and that is the claim that you went to prison. Ask them to specifically document this claim. Don't bother wasting your time threatening to sue them, let them worry about that. 3. they probably won't give you answers that you consider satisfactory, which means you can respond to any subsequent threats from them by requesting again for them to document what they did.

If I remember rightly (and I need to check my files to confirm) White Horse Services are a debt counsellor but I may be wrong.

The reason you shouldn't hit them with your doubts is that you warn them exactly how strong each part of your case against them - or defence against them - is. You need to put it back on to them to justify to you what they have been doing. Then you are controlling whose time is being used up here.

Lee

-- Lee (repossession@bigfoot.com), January 12, 2001.

Hi Tim,

Lee's very right in his opinion. I would also suggest you read through all the Halifax threads on this forum including mine to get an idea of those with authority in the Halifax that you are likely to be up against and so gauge their mindset. There is no quick fix to this I have personally resigned myself to a long fight against the Halifax because of the bloody-minded intransigence I consider I have encountered.

Judging by the increasing number of Halifax victims accessing this site nowadays it probably won't be too long before we have the numbers available to consider a class action in the courts against them!

Well done for examining your SARN results so effectively. I'm just beginning to wade through the 3Kg (Yes you read it right 3 Kilos!) of paper they sent me in response to my SARN! Anyone remember the explanation of "snowing" in legal cases in an earlier thread? The actual page count and snippets of all the mistakes (negligence?) I've found so far (and am bound to find more of) will be published on this site when I've completed the trawl.

Anyway keep up the fight Tim and Good Luck !!

-- Tony Hayter (Tony@Hayter.com), January 12, 2001.

Tony, My paperwork bundle was only 1.9kg so I have sympathy for you, but stick with it. The insights can be astounding. An interesting point to note is that the response to my SARN was a relatively thin (20 -30 Pages) packet of computer generated info. Where I got the rest was from "my file" in the Mortgage Recoveries Department. The Regulatory Risk Dept (who dealt with my SARN) went to great lengths to obscure third party info on the documents sent. The Mortgage Recoveries Department however just sent the documents as they were. Very bad I would say as I really don't think that they got my ex- wifes permission to do this. Anyway I am still reviewing and the more I dig the worse it seems to get for them as little gems keep appearing when you start piecing the whole puzzle together. Good luck and keep up the good work.

-- Tim Heath (tim@computerlogistix.freeserve.co.uk), January 15, 2001.