In the Bristol and West V Bartlett, Paragon Finance V Banks, Halifax V Grant what does the accrual of the cause of action mean. Is it from time of the sale of the house or from the time of first default payment. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-- ian (yindavies@aol.com), November 01, 2003

Answers

The cause of the accrual of action is the point at which the lender can take steps to repossess the property. It varies depending on the Terms and Conditions of your mortgage. For example if the Terms and Conditions of your mortgage state that the lender can seek to recover the property after two missed payments, then when you have two missed payments they can take action and this is the date of the accrual of the cause of action. However, if you hand back the keys to the property this is also deemed to be the accrual of the cause of action IF you sign something for the lender at the same time. Any subsequent payment is seen as an acknowledgement and restarts the clock ticking again (as does a written and signed acknowledgement) This is the short answer - if you need a more specific answer you will need to give dates so that we can help you further.

Hope this helps

-- Lexie (lexie.fabriane@ntlworld.com), November 01, 2003.

Only a couple of things I would add to the above. A shortfall debt can be acknowledged in writing (and restart the limitation period) but it does depend on the wording as to whether it would be construed as such, & as has been said a part payment would be an acknowledgement. However, if it is a joint mortgage things can be different, I would suggest you read as many previous postings as possible, a lot has already been said on this subject many times already.

Mark.

-- M Amos (idgroms@hotmail.com), November 01, 2003.