My husbands ex-wife had a property repossessed, his name was still on the mortgage because she could not get anyone to guarentee the mortgage. The Halifax had my husbands new address since 1997, yet each time they went to court to get her out they never informed my husband that the mortgage was in arrears, but they soon got in touch with him when they were looking for £8,000.00 shortfall. Why is it that the Halifax or any other building society will only get in touch with both parties to a mortgage when the property has been repossessed shouting you are jointly liable, but before this they only contact the person who is living in the property hoping in their inocence that person is honest enough to tell the other party that they are being evicted because they haven't paid the mortgage for 2 years. If we had known before this we would have sorted out the mortgage but as we were not given a chance can they really hold this against my husband. We went into the Halifax as soon as we heard about the repo and asked if we could pay off the arrears and keep up the payments but have his wife taken off the mortgage, they said no but we could do it if we came up with £36,000.00 within the next two days. Why do they not have to contact until after repossession?

-- Christine Singleton (Middleforth1@aol.com), February 10, 2002

Answers

Christine, Sorry, I can't give you an answer, but we are in the same position, except the shortfall is #25, 000. My husband didn't even know the property had been repossessed until we got the shortfall letter from the Halifax. They traced him easily enough to ask for the shortfall, but didn't let him know before that there were arrears problems.

I hope you manage to sort things out.

-- Helen Hawkins (poernigh@aol.com), February 14, 2002.