Now the stories of the 'Dash for Cash' are being revealed. SMEs and GRG are only part of the shocking treatment to which customers were subjected in order to protect the bank manager's position. I hope that more people who have been victims of this financial rape will now come forward. I would like to hear from you.

Many thanks for the contact details. Does anyone know if a deed has to be independently witnessed? My ex-husband says that he had no idea he was signing a 'deed', no-one explained the details to him and he was not encouraged to get legal advice - the BM had legal advice waivers ready to sign. Is this against the OFT and CCA?

I did ask for a full SAR but got very little. They will not give me their internal correspondence or credit manager's correspondence. In fact it was not my account, so I had trouble getting any information at all. I eventually got authorisation from my ex-husband for the bank to release their data. Should I go back and ask for more?

I have some of the documents. The ones I have were only witnessed by the bank manager - no independent witness. I think a deed needs an independent witness to a signature?

So does the forum think that the first PG was valid? Can the bank actually do that knowing that a joint owner objects to a home being taken as security?

In Oct 2009, my ex-husband signed a personal guarantee to cover an existing business overdraft of £140k for the right to borrow £60k more from NatWest which the bank knew was due to pay credit card demands. The overdraft was totally unsecured before that. His business had clearly been failing for some time and they pressurised him to secure their previously unsecured lending. It was an extremely stupid decision on his part but we now know that he was succumbing to mental illness, from which he has never recovered. He broke down at the signing of the PG and was clearly in no fit state to make any decisions. I have copies of his emails to the bank saying that he considered that he had been co-erced into signing. I am now losing my home to a bankruptcy trustee who cites this PG as the major debt and is forcing a sale of my home. I also lost my husband, of course. Here is my question - the bank pre-prepared all the documentation including legal advice waiver and minutes of company meetings which didn't exist. They wrote the PG in our joint names. I was never told about it and was never advised to get legal advice etc. NatWest has admitted that they knew I would object to my home being formally taken as security. The place for my signature was struck through, although my name on the document was not erased, and the PG was processed. Some days later, the bank bounced a payment to a major supplier which probably put the final nail in the coffin of the business. They apologised but the damage had been done. Apparently, several weeks later they signed new documents just in his name, but the PG was already underway by then. I didn't know about the PG until June 2010, when it was too late, and I didn't know that the original PG had my name on it until a year later, when I found the paperwork. Can I contest the validity of the PG? Is what they have done strictly legal?