Hi, First a little history. In 1992 my wife-to-be (WTB) bought a house with her then boyfriend. On the day they were due to move in he disappeared (not vanished but he never turned up at the house and my wife has not seen him since). So my WTB moved in and struggled for several months to keep the roof over her head even though she did not earn enough on her own to pay the mortgage. Eventually she went to her solicitor to ask for advice. She was advised to explain the situation to Mortgage Express and offer to hand them the keys to the house. She was told that that would be the end of it. So she did as she was advised, moved out of the house and gave the keys to Mortgage Express. A year or two later she received a letter from Mortgage Express telling her that they had sold the house with a £30k+ shortfall and that she was liable to pay Mortgage Express the £30k . After negotiations a deal was struck for my WTB to pay £75 a month to Mortgage Express until the £30k was paid off (I'm not sure if any interest was acruing on the £30k - if it was it could not have been much). A while later my WTB and I met and she became my wife. We carried on paying the £75/month but after a problem with our bank we moved to a different bank, but failed to set up a new £75/month standing order. In 2006 (?) my wife received a summons from Mortgage Express demanding payment of the £30k. We spoke to them and offered to re-instate the standing order, at a higher monthly amount if needed. Mortgage Express sent round an assessor to discuss with my wife her financial position. He advised her that he would report back to Mortgage Express that we were not in a position to pay the £30k but were happy and were capable of paying an amount monthly. Unfortunately Mortgage Express decided they were not interested in this - they wanted their pound of flesh and threatened a CCJ with a legal charge against our family home. Not happy about this we sought legal advice. This turned out to be as useful as a chocolate teapot - essentially my wife was told that she had been naive in handing the keys back in the first place and Mortgage Express had the right to recover the £30k even if it seriously affected people who had not been involved with the initial problem. So a CCJ was issued agsint my wife and when we sold our house in 2008 Mortgage Express creamed off some £15k of the equity (nice of them to only take half!). The CCJ was therefore satisfied and we are now in the clear. Now. What I want to know is if there is any way we can go after Mortgage Express to get the £15k back? 1) We have no proof that Mortgage Express ever tried to find the 'disappeared' boyfriend and decided instead to take the easy route and come after my WTB. 2) What gave Mortgage Express the right to sell the house at a loss (their decision) and then go after my WTB for the shortfall? 3) Why would they not accept the offer of re-instating the standing order? 4) We were never given a copy of the assessors report, so we do not know what was actually reported back to Mortgage Express. Alternatively, if we could find the 'disappeared' boyfriend, could we go after him for damages (i.e. recovery of half of the CCJ value, plus half of the monthly £75 payments? Can anyone help as even after all these years my wife is traumatised by what has happened to her due to no fault of her own? Thanks Gremlin807