# Bank obtaining Judgment - What happens next???



## mrsnocash (7 Oct 2009)

I contacted one of the main banks last December informing them that I was in financial difficulty and asked could I come to some agreement in relation to my cc and loans. The amount they offered to take for my cc was still too much and they wouldn't budge on the loans. To make a long story short despite numerous letters and financial statements being sent to them, they wouldn't agree to any payments that were within my budget and my case was sent to their solicitors. They then closed my bank account.
I heard nothing from the bank for some time and then i received court documents from the solrs for the cc and the loans. 
I've written to the solrs and have forwarded them financial statements outlining what I can offer them as repayment based on the current househomld income. OH has recently been let go and has since had to start claiming illness benefit so our income has been reduced to €79 more than we need to survive every month and this is after we reduced our mortgage to €600 for the next three months.
Yesterday I received a letter from the solr stating that they are lodging the legal proceedings in the courts as I have failed to pay what I owe and that a judgment will issue shortly. They then asked me to confirm that I have a mortgage on my home address.
My question is will they go ahead with obtaining a judgment mortgage even though I have offered some form of repayment or will they just bring me to court to obtain a court order for the repayment. The reason I ask is that I have spoken to someone else who didn't make any payments or even offers of repayment on what they owed to the same bank and they were only brought to court and the judge ordered him to make an affordable payment. 
I'm at the end of my tether at the moment. With a baby due in a few weeks and the OH being as sick as he is I really can't cope with the worry. Any information on what may happena next would be greatly appreciated.


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## Brendan Burgess (7 Oct 2009)

*Re: What happens next???*

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## gizmo (9 Oct 2009)

I think that they will get a judgement, even though you have offered to pay..... I know someone it happened to, and the worst thing was that interest accrued on the loans and was added to the judgement too. Have you contacted your local MABS office? If not, I would and tell them you're in dire straights and need urgent advice. Sorry, I can't say anything more helpful, but try and get mabs to help you out.


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## mrsnocash (10 Oct 2009)

We contacted MABS last year when we started to get into financial difficulty and at that point we had already started the process ourselves of contacting our creditors etc. I've since contacted them again but it'll be months before ae can get to talk to them face to face and their only advice over the phone has been to keep doing what we're doing and hope for the best. In fairness they have said that if i end up in court and the judge can see that we're trying to play ball with all our creditors the courts may accept our repayment offers. 
Having spoken to someone  else today about it all though I'm now wondering can the bank obtain a judgment mortgage on an unsecured loan/cc debt or is a judgment the most they can get


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## bond-007 (12 Oct 2009)

> Having spoken to someone else today about it all though I'm now wondering can the bank obtain a judgment mortgage on an unsecured loan/cc debt or is a judgment the most they can get?


They will get a judgement anyways. There is very little you can do to stop it. 
How much is the total debt? That decides what court they use.

After they get their judgement there are a number of options open to them:

1. Send the sheriff round to seize goods to the value of the debt. Very rare this happens as unless you live in a palace the sheriff will not take anything.
2. Place a judgement mortgage on your house. This will prevent you from selling or refinancing without paying the debt first. A very common move these days.
3. Summons you to the District Court to obtain an instalment order. This is the most usual method of enforcing a judgement. The judge will decide on how much you can afford to pay them per month. You will put your side of the argument to the judge and he makes a decision.


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## Bronte (12 Oct 2009)

To get a judge onside make sure you are making some regular payments to the bank. As far as I can tell most judges are on the side of the borrowers these days especially for those who can demonstrate that they are doing everything to pay back the debt.  

Other than a solicitor's letter have you received any legal document/summons?

Is there a particular reason why the solicitors asked you whether the mortgage was on your home address, it's a very strange question?

Would you consider doing the moneymakeover section to see if any of us can point out any savings that you can do.  Try not to worry about your situation even though this is very difficult.  Have you someone you can talk to about it so that you don't feel you are alone.


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## dewdrop (12 Oct 2009)

Am i wrong in thinking that when a financial obtainsa judgment a judge has no role in preventing them from registering it as a charge against a property a borrower owns.


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## mrsnocash (12 Oct 2009)

Thanks for the replies. In total I owe about 20k to this bank but i also have other creditors and I owe about 50k in total. I've cut down all the household expenses to the bare minimum but with the OH out of work sick and our monthly income only €2400 we are really feeling the pinch. Our biggest monthly expense aside from the mortgage is our health insurance butwith OH being sick I'm not prepared to change that as the illness is long term and will require hospilisation in the future.
The solicitors have sent court papers to me, this was the first contact I had with the solicitor. I wrote to them at the time offering to pay what we could afford but have since only received an acknowledgement letter and more court papers.
They requested the information about whether I had a mortgage on my home address in a letter last month, as well as asking me to confirm the number of dependents we had.
At this point I'm no longer worrying about it all. I can only afford to pay so much a month and I can provide a financial statement to the judge when it goes to court. Sending in the sheriff will be pointless as we don't have a house full of expensive equipment etc so short of them deciding to take the beds or the 7year old TV they'll get nothing worth selling.


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## bond-007 (12 Oct 2009)

I take it you have a civil bill from the bank for the local circuit court. Well there is very little you can do at present to prevent judgement. Regular payments etc only make a difference at a District Court hearing to set an instalment order. The county registar is basically a rubber stamp operation for the banks. Unless you have shed loads of money is there little that can be done to halt them at that stage.

I think by asking if you had a mortgage they were sussing out if they could slap a judgement mortgage on your house.


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## bond-007 (12 Oct 2009)

dewdrop said:


> Am i wrong in thinking that when a financial obtainsa judgment a judge has no role in preventing them from registering it as a charge against a property a borrower owns.


Absolutely not. Once they have judgement they can slap a judgement mortgage on any property owned or jointly owned by the debtor.


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## anniemac (12 Oct 2009)

bond-007 said:


> After they get their judgement there are a number of options open to them:
> 
> 1. Send the sheriff round to seize goods to the value of the debt. *Very rare this happens as unless you live in a palace the sheriff will not take anything.*



dont understand this comment, can you clarify, thanks!


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## Bronte (13 Oct 2009)

The Sherriff is not really looking for goods as it's not worth the hassle in most cases.  There is a cost and hassle to taking away furniture/electrical items etc so unless you have say antiques/jewellery it wouldn't be worth their while.  Think about it from the sherriff's point of view.


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## bond-007 (13 Oct 2009)

Exactly. The sheriff is not going to be interested in general household stuff as it is not really saleable. 
It would be a different story if you had a Monet hanging on a wall.


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## mrsnocash (15 Oct 2009)

Got some good news this morning. The solicitor wrote to say that they are accepting the repayment I offered them for my personal loan and will review it again in 6 months. 
They did however say that they will be obtaining a judgment on the house.
Hopefully I'll get the same acceptance in regards to the cc debt.

I've just one more question though. My house is not registered with PRAI. The mortgage is only registered with Registry of Deeds. I was told yesterday that they may not look for a judgment mortgage as this would incur the costs of registering the property with PRAI first. Does anyone know if this is the case


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## mf1 (15 Oct 2009)

" I've just one more question though. My house is not registered with PRAI. The mortgage is only registered with Registry of Deeds. I was told yesterday that they may not look for a judgment mortgage as this would incur the costs of registering the property with PRAI first. Does anyone know if this is the case"

Thats not the case - a judgment mortgage is a relatively simple procedure for a creditor once a judgment has  been obtained. 

mf


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## Harley (16 Oct 2009)

My friends husband owes 52k on a business loan, he has agreed a repayment plan.
The other day he received a solicitors letter (representing AIB), saying that the first repayment must be in the bank within 7 days.

 They also stated that they have obtained a judgement against his mortgage and it will not be discharged til the debt is repayed in full.

The thing is this couple have never had a mortgage nor ever applied for one.
They have always rented.

Scare tactics at its best  I think.


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## mf1 (16 Oct 2009)

Harley said:


> My friends husband owes 52k on a business loan, he has agreed a repayment plan.
> The other day he received a solicitors letter (representing AIB), saying that the first repayment must be in the bank within 7 days.
> 
> They also stated that they have obtained a judgement against his mortgage and it will not be discharged til the debt is repayed in full.
> ...



Or else someone has got the wrong end of the stick! Its not possible to "get a judgment against a mortgage" even if they owned their house which they don't, I doubt that a solicitor wrote that and I doubt that your friend was scared!

mf


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## Harley (16 Oct 2009)

mf1 said:


> Or else someone has got the wrong end of the stick! Its not possible to "get a judgment against a mortgage" even if they owned their house which they don't, I doubt that a solicitor wrote that and I doubt that your friend was scared!
> 
> mf



Ok just rang  her to get the exact wording, not quite what she told me before but here goes;

"Our instructions are to proceed to register the Banks Judgement as a Judgement Mortgage over your property in the interim.
When the debt is paid in full, the said Judgement Mortgage can then be discharged".

Why are the solicitors assuming they have a property? They really dont have any assets to their name.


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## lff12 (16 Oct 2009)

Harley said:


> Why are the solicitors assuming they have a property? They really dont have any assets to their name.



I find people tend to assume that if you are in reasonably paid full time employement and over 30, that you own a property.  Very possible that a legal secretary has picked something up wrong.  If they have no property and thus no property based loans then there is nothing to secure that against.  Its scare mongering, but Irish banks are suddenly finding themselves having to cope with a situation not seen before (in the 1980s lending was pretty tight so this is pretty much unprecedented).  Most of them have not skilled staff or good practice processes in place to deal with lots of consumer debt, so its quite unsurprising that they are regressing to scare tactics.

What I did find chilling though, was a person I know who does information management in one of the large bailed out Irish banks (that will of course remain nameless), was asked 2 days after the announcement of the closure of a large undertaking with substantial job losses, go produce a full report financially on every single customer known to work at that company.  I was shocked at that and wonder does it breach data protection laws - surely that can only be used to prepare to hound these poor people before they'd even been let go?  (Note that it was a full report on the PEOPLE working there, and not simply the borrowings of people working there).

As of the OP, I can sympathise.  The bank closing your current accound hits very hard and I seriously have an issue with banks that permit that to happen.  Another questionable one they do is cancelling your overdraft while you are overdrawn without notice and thus plunging you from a "legal" agreement to non agreement, and with its massive penalties.  This in itself creates massive hardship as it immediately can enable the bank to rake up large penalty charges - this is one area which badly needs regulatory investigation.

There is apparently a enormous backlog in the courts regarding judgement and also a degree of change likely to take place on how situations like yours are handled.  I would continue to make whatever payments you are currently making and keep in touch.  It sounds like you are doing quite well.  MABS are good and very supportive, but right now they cannot make any recommendations that are binding on the banks so its not likely that they will do any more for you than you're doing yourself.  Chin up and keep going, it sounds like you are doing as much as you can to keep things together.


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## bond-007 (16 Oct 2009)

> There is apparently a enormous backlog in the courts regarding judgement.


I would doubt that as the banks tend to use the county registrars to obtain default judgements. It is basically a rubber-stamping operation with high throughput. I would say that very few civil bills are actually defended against.


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