This information may be of interest to anyone repossessed around the 1997 to 2001 where the Building Society / Solicitors inform them that a Money Judgement Order (MJO) has been obtained at the same time as a possession order. Firstly many thanks to all who contribute to this site and particularly to Guy Skipworth whose help has been invaluable in the last few hectic days.(posted 7909 days ago)We were repossessed in mid 2000 by Mortgage Express, they sold our home in Feb 2001 and let us know that there was a 28K shortfall (they sold at 38.25K) some 5 months later. We have therefore been in constant correspondence with them for the past year and, taking the advice on this site, served a SARN on them in Sept 2001. Their SARN response was delivered late and incomplete, we now have a censure against them from the Information Commissioner as a result of this. Their SARN response definitely shows mismanagement / professional incompetence in the matters of the – Valuations – Marketing – Auction – Sale and Underselling. In addition they valued, marketed & sold our home with the incorrect name! Form TR2 (for the Land Registry) was the ONLY correct document and they therefore believe that makes matters OK. The Solicitors Completion Statement even contained the incorrect house name. By the way we only had a house name, no house number, this making matters more critical in our opinion.
The latest stage in the saga has been for ME to hand matters over to their Solicitors (DLA). DLA then wrote to us to say that they had been instructed to enforce the MJO obtained at the time of possession. This was followed up, a few days later, with an ‘Order To Attend Court For Questioning’. This was a smart move to obtain information, via the Court, without asking us to complete an Income & Expenditure Form. The penalty for not complying is prison, as it would be contempt of court.
As a result of posting an enquiry on this site, to ask if anyone else had been forced down this route, we suddenly began to wonder about the MJO. Upon reading the Possession Order the matter was unclear so we telephoned the Court for clarification. It would appear that the older computer software, used by the Courts, does not allow a Possession Order to be printed off until all blank fields have text inserted. The Possession Order has one line, which reads as follows –
The court adjudges that the defendant pay the claimant – insert sum -, which is the amount currently outstanding under the mortgage on – insert date -.
Some solicitors may (as with DLA Solicitors) be misreading this as a MJO. In our particular experience this is what happened and they convinced the Court that they had a MJO (did they really know the truth one wonders?) and were therefore justified in requesting an ‘Order To Attend Court For Questioning’ on this basis. This is not so and the Court have, this Friday afternoon, cancelled the appointment for examining our finances, which was due on Tuesday morning. With a Bank Holiday in the way this was certainly cutting it fine.
Apparently DLA were “shell-shocked & furious” and have not, to date, even replied to the Court when informed of their error. No doubt that will now have to apply to the Court for a MJO and this will give us the chance to defend our case (at last) and counterclaim for their mismanagement and underselling. The important information, for everyone out there, is that there may not be a MJO against you just because the Solicitors tell you that there is. Even the Court officers had to read the document carefully and then refer back to the Judge’s (hand-written) judgement, from which the printed judgement is produced.
We shall keep everyone posted on progress, under the heading – MORE ABOUT MORTGAGE EXPRESS.
Regards to you all, Mike.