Thread: PPi and death

Originally Posted by katie3105

My friends mum has just died aged 67. She had a credit card with Capital One which she has had since 24/9/99. She was paying PPi on the card...the last statement i have is oct 08 and she paid £47.32. The balance on the card is £3,300.

Has anyone any ideas in how to pursue this. The estate is not worth much and her husband only has the house and he does not want to have to be forced to sell to pay off this debt.

I was going to do an SAR and CCA request but didnt know wether this would achieve anything and just not sure on how to proceed with it ???

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I agree with most of what Pompey says, but in my view:

1. a CCA request is likely to be rejected on the basis that the Loan Agreement came to an end on the death of the borrower.
2. an SAR is also likely to be rejected because Data Protection Act 1998 does not apply to requests for personal information relating to deceased individuals.

(Similar sorts of requests may be made for deceased persons under Freedom of Information Act 2000 provided the holder of the info is a Public Body... but unfortunately this is not helpful in relation to PPI records held by a Company.)

However, this seems to me something of a side issue, because generally speaking, you cannot inherit a deceased person's debts.

Credit card debt is almost always unsecured and personal to the borrower. So, in the unlikely event, that the Estate is insolvent, all that would happen is these debts would go unpaid, i.e. the "debt" would be written off.

Your friend's Mum's husband would only realistically be at risk of having to sell the house, if the debt related to one secured on the property or an unpaid tax liability and that is not the case here.

Insofar as a potential PPI claim is concerned:

It may be open to the PR's of the Estate to commence proceedings to recover any missold PPI premiums.

However, such a claim would, at least, present evidential problems, because the PR's will find it difficult to obtain the information that they need to pursue the claim and the person to whom the PPI was sold is no longer able to give evidence about the circumstances of it... and the PR's are under a duty to the Estate and the Residuary Beneficiaries to protect the assets of the Estate, so it may ultimately come down to a question of finances, rather than legal principle. In other words, can the PR's justify spending £2,000 reclaiming £1,000 of missold PPI?

Furthermore, the PR's authority to act derives from the Grant of Representation... so they would have to wait some where between 6 to 12 months from the date of death for the Grant of Representation before they would be able to do issue any proceedings.

The fos may or may not be prepared to consider complaints in relation to the affairs of deceased people and they may or may not require a Grant of Representation. Your best bet is probably to phone them and ask.

That said, in my view, it is probably worth corresponding with the Bank and then (inevitably) pursuing the complaint to at least the FOS (if they will hear it) or the point of issuing proceedings, because the Bank KNEW how old your mother's friend was and also KNEW that the PPI was useless to her once she reached the age of 65, yet they continued to charge the premiums to her account... and none of these matters relies on the (absent) evidence of the borrower.