heard nothing from lender & therefore rebuilt my life as you do got myself a new partner (not married) have got a joint mortgage & 3 kids together & now approx 6 years on lender is chasing with threats of taking action against me. i have recv'd similar letters to this from them but they have never actually done anything other than make threats. i can put up with the threats as i am quite a strong person however one thing that concerns me & i am wondering if you could answer it is can they make me sell the house to enable the debt to be paid even though my partner who is the other joint owner is nothing to do with the repossession. cheers lindsey.......

-- lindsey royale (teddyb@hotmail.com), April 03, 2001

Answers

In short,yes. It would be an uphill battle for them, but if you are a joint mortgage holder then you have an asset against which they can distrain. They can get a court order to force the sale, but it would be after all the normal due process and this would take years. Did you disclose the repossession to your new Lender? If not, I would be more worried about the repercussions of that. Once they find out who you have a mortgage with, they can register a lien against the property which lets your current lender know what is going on. Tricky.

-- Too scared to say (iwasduped@yahoo.com), April 03, 2001.

Elsewhere on this site are some snippets of information about this. I read, for example, that it is extremely rare for a lender to force the sale of a property in such circumstances, because lenders basically don't like shafting each other; it is also very rare for a lender to put a 'charge' on a property.

Please read this site (start with 'Repossession') because if you are a strong person you should definitely fight for your rights.

However, if you were less than honest with your current lender about a previous repossession, then I think that you need to face up to this. Perhaps start by taking advice - the CAB are very caring and non-judgemental (and their advice is free). By the way, if you did tell your current lender that you had previously been repossessed, I would be very interested to know what its reaction was to this.

-- Eleanor Scott (eleanor.scott@btinternet.com), April 04, 2001.