Cabot Financial letters 5yrs after discharge from Bankruptcy

[Eilish]

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me with my query please. I went bankrupt in the UK in February 2014. All debts were included in my bankruptcy and I was discharged in 2015. Since then a couple of letters came from Cabot financial with very little information in the letters. I didn't take much notice as all debts were covered in the bankruptcy and it didn't say what the debt was for. Another letter arrived today from Cabot. It says an outstanding debt of over €11k is owed since November 2014. None of the debts in my bankruptcy were anything near that apart from my mortgage and the debt is dated from 9 months after I declared bankruptcy. I'm not sure what to do. Should I engage with them and if I don't will this debt just stay on my credit record indefinitely. I was discharged from bankruptcy over 5yrs ago and would love to get to a point where I have credit record again. Any advice would be greatly recieved. Thanks in advance.

 

[TLO]

Hi Eilish, you probably know this already, but it's worth re-iterating, from the moment the judge made the bankruptcy order against you in February 2014 you became debt free. You may have chosen to continue paying your mortgage, and that's fine, but all other debts were erased.

The problem is that sometimes creditors are slow to update their computer systems, and maybe the original creditors didn't pass correspondence from the UK's Insolvency Service on to Cabot. So Cabot still thinks you owe money, even though you don't.

You could call Cabot and say "I don't owe this money, I was declared bankrupt". A more comprehensive approach might be to obtain a copy of your credit record from centralcreditregister.ie. There may be other creditors mistakenly recording outstanding amounts and all of them should be contacted and asked to correct their records. It may take a while to get your credit record corrected, but the creditors must update their files to reflect the true position.

 

[Eilish]

Thanks for the reply TLO. I didn't continue to pay the mortgage and the house is in the banks possession. It's only in the last year the bank stopped sending me demand letters. I got my discharged date in writing from the UK and sent it to them. It's the date and the amount of the debt on the Cabot letter that is so strange. I will do as you advised above and hopefully get back on track. Thanks for the advice. Much appreciated.