Person A owns a house and is a guarantor for a bankrupt business (person B), so is now liable if person B cannot keep up payments and person A has been threatened that they have to sell the owned house if such happens. Person A has offspring and was wondering if it is legally elligible to sign the deeds to the fully owned house over to the offspring thus ridding the burdon of losing the property as person A would no longer own the house. Any advice, positive or negative, would be gratefully received. Thank you all for your time.

Person A has been given a time limit to either agree to pay too much per month or sell their house. The loan is in person B's name, but as the business did not succeed and they have no assets (that we know of) the large debt is now being deposited on to the guarantor, who is currently only on a pension of not that much greater than a state pension. Advice will be sought from a solicitor soon, but does anyone have any advice as to what can, or may, happen in this situation? Thanks all for your time.

Thanks for your reply, we'll try making payments online instead then, the guy over the phone wouldn't accept anything. He also said once they;ve calculated the revised amount we owe -which should take a fair bit off the debt- we'd still have to deal with bailiffs, but I'm glad he's wrong. I don't want to deal with these people. We want to make it clear that we want to pay the council tax what we owe ASAP too, just not via the bailiffs. I'll sit tight indeed, there's no car, nothing in the garden and they certainly won't get in. Thanks again.

They legally can't get in as we haven't signed a walking possession agreement, they've never been in the house, we've never even spoke to them. But it made me wonder how many times bailiffs have illegally forced entry into properties? Do they do this often? What are the repurcussions for a bailiff who does this? Even though the law is on my side for this it's still very worrying that you might get a particularly bad egg to deal with who breaks in, takes your things and then leaves you to deal with the mess and chasing it up?

My mother has been trying to organise a direct debit with them via the phone today but they're saying they CAN'T accept any payments because the account is with the bailiffs. She stated she refuses to deal with bailiffs due to their fees and the fact they are trying to collect the WRONG amount of money (she had her council tax revised recently because she was off sick for a few weeks). I understand that if we ignore bailiffs long enough they'll have to to hand the debt back to the council tax office, so why don't the council tax people just stop being a pain in the arse and accept our payments?

Yeah I've had experiences with bailiffs before, I know they're pretty powerless as long as they can't get into your property (which they certainly wont!) So far they've charged me around £35 for two visits, the second one obviously to tell me that they'll be coming to levy my goods, so it seems they've been within the guidelines with their charges. They'll probably add a charge again when they come knocking next week to levy :/ but yeah we had no communication with them, as in we ignored the two letters they put through the door for each visit, the only contact we'll be having with the bailiffs is the letter I'm sending tomorrow telling them we'll deal with the debt with the CTax office and not them. Anyway, I'm off to put £1.50 on the Euro lottery to see if I can win that £90,000,000. That would sharp sort out any council tax arrears.

I'm simply mediating for my mother. She is not really computer literate and has had no experience and no confidence in dealing with bailiffs, so I'm basically handling the administration side for her to make sure everything is in order. Thanks for the comprehensive reply, Happy Contrails, unfortunately they had sent my mother the final notice and court summons as they should but she ignored these with the excuse that she is planning to get a Debt Relief Order. If I had known of this I would have intervened a lot sooner to try and sort out a 2 year payment plan with the CTax offices as opposed to letting it get this far.

I'm basically telling you my plan of action to see if I've understood the dos and don'ts from browsing these forums for a while, please respond if I'm missing anything. OK they've had their 2nd visit and say they're coming round to levy goods within 5 days. I believe they can't break and enter as if they did they'd be breaking the law. We have had no correspondence with them, ignoring the door on both times. This is correct right? I plan to send the bailiffs a letter telling them that I know my rights and that I am commencing payments of £25 a month to the council tax offices, but not to them. I do not want to pay bailiffs any money, but do want to settle the £580 debt with the council tax office instead (which works out at £25 a month over 2 years). This isn't my debt, it is my mother's which I had no idea about until we started getting bailiff visits. But yeah I'd like to know if this is a sound plan, I'm trying to get the bailiffs off my back and hand the account back to the council tax office, I know they can't break and enter even though they're threatening to levy goods, and I am not refusing to pay the debt in more than two years to the council tax offices. Anything I'm missing?

Do I just ask for that in writing? I will get on that immediately. The arrears I am (supposed to be) paying off are basically all loan debts, although I do have agreed court fines to pay £15 a month, and regular letters threatening bailiffs and court action. I am living with a parent at the minute who is in arrears for council tax and rent, some of which I am apparently liable for, so would that count? I was under the impression that applying for my case to be classed as a financial hardship case would mean that I was asking for the OFT test case to be ignored because I have debts and am out of work etc. But all they've done is dropped the charges from the last few weeks since I first got in touch about financial hardship? Disappointing! Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

HELLO again! After 6 weeks I have finally heard from them! It is not the news I was expecting at all. They have only refunded the money they have taken out over the last 6 weeks since I stopped banking with them. I was overdrawn by five pounds and incurred charges of £305, which is all that they have refunded. The £1100 isn't really referred to unless you count "We have thoroughly investigated your request and are satisfied that the fess to which you refer have been raised correctly in accordance with out charging policy." So that's it!? My £1100 in charges from the 3-4 years previously have not been refunded at all, so what is my next step? Advice please!

I thought so, I mean it technically is saying that, but I don't like the way it's set out on the letter. It'll be set out that way on purpose of course to try and put doubts in people's heads about whether to bother furthering the claim for financial hardship.

OK UPDATE and more HELP required... I have got my letter stating they need my income and expenditure. But read this part of the letter and see how you take it: "...If we do not receive this information we will assume you no longer wish to claim financial hardship and will be unable to consider your request for a refund of fees on that basis. We will also be unable to progress your request until the outcome of the test court case is known. In line with other current account providers... " then it goes on to tell me about the test case and that the FSA has agreed to suspend the normal timetable for dealing with complaints, how they don't know how long it will take for the test case etc. SO is this letter telling me I still have to wait even if my claim for financial hardship goes through? Or is it just trying to mislead me? I realise that it can actually be construed both ways. Anyway I will send this form off monday by recorded delivery and keep you all updated!

It's alliance and leicester. I have stopped all payments going into that account and am opening another... I was £15 overdrawn 13 days ago and now they're taking £65 off me! £5 a day til I clear it!! I get £44 a week haha. Edit: By the way the letter was received last thursday so still waiting to hear from them atm.

Thank you so much! I already have a claim in to get the chargs back but obviously they've put that on hold with the court test-cases and wotnot. I'll draft up a letter straight away. Edit: Yeah the letter I saw didn't mention any of the circumstances of hardship. This seems much more apt!

Help!!! I think I qualify for getting my bank charges back immediately under hardship, but how do I do this? I found a letter template before but it made no sense to me I wasn't sure if it was the right thing I needed. I'm on income support while an appeal is dealt with - £51 a week (although they're taking £7 a week off me for a crisis loan I had to get when I lost out on three weeks money due to misinformation). I'm supposed to pay £11 a week rent and council tax and my gas and electricity is £15 a week plus arrears. I'm left with £20 for food andhouse essentials, not to mention court fines and other debts. Does that count as hardship? I hope I can get my charges back there are nearly £1000 worth.