rubyjane
09-24-2012, 10:48 PM
Hi
I am new to the forum so please be patient, this is a bit of an ordeal.
I am the unhappy owner of an apartment in Murcia which was mis sold to me back in 2007, however that's another story.
The problem I have is that I had fallen behind with my community fees due to financial difficulties here in the UK, and the inevitable happened where the community chased me for the arrears. This was expected and I contacted them to explain my situation and asked for some sort of plan to be arranged, I didn't recieve a reply.
The arrears were then being dealt with on behalf of the community by a uk collection company, whom we contacted and started to make inroads towards clearing the arrears.
It was then to my horror that we recieved a European Order for Payment for 600 euros via a UK county court! I immediately contacted the collection company to ask why this had happened and was assured that it would be halted as we had agreed to start to clear the arrears, plus the fact that I was disputing the amount showing on the court papers, all resulting in me not disputing the order.
The director of the collection company said that I should never have recieved this order for payment as I was not refusing to pay, sent me an agreement to sign, which was then sent to the court to have this judgement set aside, to which I was somewhat relieved as any CCJ on my record would compromise my job.
Next I recieved a visit from two high court enforcement officers saying that this case had gone to the high court and unless I payed the sum of £1800 then they would start to remove my belongings!
I contacted the collection company in the UK and the director was quite shocked to hear that bailiffs were at my home in the UK, I gave the phone to one of these guy's and to cut a long story short, their head office instructed them to walk away. Turns out that the community solicitor had sent them in!
I cotacted the solicitor to find out what was going on and he said that he had no knowledge that agreements had been made to clear my debts, which I found very unconvincing. I sent all correspondence to him as requested and was told that he would be in touch. By this time I had made payments of 1100 euros from my arrears, leaving 740 outstanding of which 500 is to be paid by the end of this month.
The solicitor contacted me today to tell me that I had not made a payment for this month, to which I reminded him that I did tell him that I will be paying at the end of the month.
How very strange it was for me to hear that I owed 1300 euros and not the 740 which was showing on my community statement!
When I asked he said that this extra amount was for spanish court costs and uk court costs and collections fees. I did not dispute this but did ask for documents and breakdowns to confirm that I was actually liable for these extra charges and to get my UK solicitor to check them over.
The solicitor then informed me that he could not provide these until I had actually paid the surplus as he was not sure how much it will come to??? Surely this cant be right??
Am I expected to pay for something without any form of evidence that I actually owe??
This has caused my wife and myself an unbelievable amount of stress for something that we will never benefit from, while I do fully understand that the community needs its members to pay their fees, we were in financial difficulty but did not refuse to pay ours, we simply needed help.
I have now arranged a meeting with my UK solicitor and also my local MP to try to sort this out as I dont want to be ripped off and certainly dont want another visit from HCEO's and was wondering if anybody knows if what this solicitor is saying is legal, and is normal
Sorry for the long post
kind regards
I am new to the forum so please be patient, this is a bit of an ordeal.
I am the unhappy owner of an apartment in Murcia which was mis sold to me back in 2007, however that's another story.
The problem I have is that I had fallen behind with my community fees due to financial difficulties here in the UK, and the inevitable happened where the community chased me for the arrears. This was expected and I contacted them to explain my situation and asked for some sort of plan to be arranged, I didn't recieve a reply.
The arrears were then being dealt with on behalf of the community by a uk collection company, whom we contacted and started to make inroads towards clearing the arrears.
It was then to my horror that we recieved a European Order for Payment for 600 euros via a UK county court! I immediately contacted the collection company to ask why this had happened and was assured that it would be halted as we had agreed to start to clear the arrears, plus the fact that I was disputing the amount showing on the court papers, all resulting in me not disputing the order.
The director of the collection company said that I should never have recieved this order for payment as I was not refusing to pay, sent me an agreement to sign, which was then sent to the court to have this judgement set aside, to which I was somewhat relieved as any CCJ on my record would compromise my job.
Next I recieved a visit from two high court enforcement officers saying that this case had gone to the high court and unless I payed the sum of £1800 then they would start to remove my belongings!
I contacted the collection company in the UK and the director was quite shocked to hear that bailiffs were at my home in the UK, I gave the phone to one of these guy's and to cut a long story short, their head office instructed them to walk away. Turns out that the community solicitor had sent them in!
I cotacted the solicitor to find out what was going on and he said that he had no knowledge that agreements had been made to clear my debts, which I found very unconvincing. I sent all correspondence to him as requested and was told that he would be in touch. By this time I had made payments of 1100 euros from my arrears, leaving 740 outstanding of which 500 is to be paid by the end of this month.
The solicitor contacted me today to tell me that I had not made a payment for this month, to which I reminded him that I did tell him that I will be paying at the end of the month.
How very strange it was for me to hear that I owed 1300 euros and not the 740 which was showing on my community statement!
When I asked he said that this extra amount was for spanish court costs and uk court costs and collections fees. I did not dispute this but did ask for documents and breakdowns to confirm that I was actually liable for these extra charges and to get my UK solicitor to check them over.
The solicitor then informed me that he could not provide these until I had actually paid the surplus as he was not sure how much it will come to??? Surely this cant be right??
Am I expected to pay for something without any form of evidence that I actually owe??
This has caused my wife and myself an unbelievable amount of stress for something that we will never benefit from, while I do fully understand that the community needs its members to pay their fees, we were in financial difficulty but did not refuse to pay ours, we simply needed help.
I have now arranged a meeting with my UK solicitor and also my local MP to try to sort this out as I dont want to be ripped off and certainly dont want another visit from HCEO's and was wondering if anybody knows if what this solicitor is saying is legal, and is normal
Sorry for the long post
kind regards