Hello, Not sure if anyone can advise me with this, but I'd be grateful if you could. Trying to cut a long story short, my ex wife and I were divorced around 6 years ago. We had a joint account at Lloyds which I never bothered getting her name taken off ( my mistake, I know). Over the years nothing has gone on with the account other than a small pension payment (to me) that went in monthly. My ex and I have both long since remarried. Recently, I was given a terminal diagnosis for cancer. One of my company pension schemes agreed to pay out a lump sum of £17000. Because my new account is with a small building society, the quickest and easiest way to process the payment was through the semi-dormant Lloyds account, so I had the money paid into there. I then decided to go to the local branch and ask them if they could open a single account in my name and transfer the money. They sorted everything out, at the last minute the manager walked in and told me she had frozen the account as I had now informed them it was 'in dispute'. They said they would send a letter to my ex ( her address of the last 6 years wasn't on their records as she hasn't had access to the account so I had to provide it). She is refusing to sign her permission to close the account - she doesn't know I have money in it. Where do I go from here? We're Lloyds legally able to freeze the account without either of us asking? I don't have long left and need the money to get me through and arrange will, funeral, various aids etc. P.s in the divorce settlement, the judge specifically stated that my ex was not entitled to any of my pensions. As this pension was paid out due to terminal illness surely they can't keep it from me? Grateful for any advice, especially if Lloyds have overstepped their authority.

Thanks BF. Will go back to Talktalk as we had no problems with them - only went to BT as they were offering Fibre Seems the reason for this is that it is not yet working at our exchange. We will hopefully reinstate our ADSL line with Talktalk and then upgrade to fibre with them once the exchange gets sorted. Not interested in going to the Ombudsman for pretty much the reasons you mentioned and I think anything in that direction would be a long, drawn out process. Will take a read of the Customer services guide and then proceed along the cancellation path. I take it my argument is along the lines of although the cooling off period of 14 days has passed, I am not looking at that but the fact that they haven't provided what they promised at the time agreed and cannot guarantee when they will be able to provide it. In short, they have sold me something which they do not have. Added to that, they have also managed to remove my previous access to the internet. Incidentally, we paid £176.85 up front fee which they say they will retain as it was for an advance payment of line rental only and our phone line started working as agreed on 12th January. However, the contract shows that the package is for "Broadband and calls" starting on 12th January. The £176.85 is for £169.90 Line Rental Saver, £6.95 Delivery Charge (for the Fibre router - which someboady had to be at home to sign for). Again, my assumption is that although they have satisfied the line rental side of the deal, they should not be allowed to keep the money other than for the time the line has been used as they were provided as part of a package which has not been provided as a whole?

Will do. Thanks Bankfodder.

We ordered a BT Infiniti package giving fibre, by sport and line rental on December 20th and paid £169 up front. We were given a fibre connection date of 12th January. BT Sport was available immediately. Took the day off on the 12th and had an email at 6:30 am reminding me to be available between 8 & 1. At 1:39 got a call to say an engineer was unavailable and they had rescheduled to 26th Jan. In the meantime, because we had given permission for BT to deal with Talk talk (our present provider) they had cancelled our broadband connection at midnight. Thus, we were left with no internet connection at all for over 2 weeks. Got no help with BT online during the day with expediting connection so called Talk talk this evening who said they could reconnect our internet as our account was still live, although they would need BT to cancel their contract and inform them first. Easy I though, and moved unwittingly into a 45 minute deadlock with BT who said that our 14 day cooling off period ended on 3rd January and a cancellation would now result in a £300 cancellation fee! Can they do this when they have failed to meet their own delivery date and deprived us of internet access? They then said that the delay was due to a problem at the exchange (previously it was due to a shortage of engineers to perform the connection) but work should be finished on Friday and to call them then to arrange a possible expedite on the work. To be honest, I lost faith in them to deliver either the repair, the engineer or the expedite. In fact, I'm seriously doubting their ability to meet the 26th Jan date. Told them to cancel as Talk talk could connect me and I would fight them in court for the cancellation fee. Was then told they would keep the £169 already paid as this was for line rental (phone line was transferred to BT yesterday without problem), even though it was part of a package including Infiniti. There's more to the story, but my question at the moment is A. Can they really charge a cancellation fee when they have failed to deliver and left me without any internet access. B. Can they keep the money we paid up front for the full service? To my mind they have failed to honour the contract and left me one days leave short. Thanks.

Hi, just before Christmas, our finance manager got in touch with me to say that he had had a deduction from earnings demand from (I think) the DWP with regard to overpaid Tax Credits (I'm assuming - it may have been JSA). The total came to £650 and they took out half just before Christmas and half coming out end of January. Now, first thing to say is that I have no problem paying what is owed and the second payment will go out as demnanded and the matter will be closed. However, to me it raised a few questions and I wondered if I might get some answers here. Firstly, the only time I received such payments (and it was a mixture of JSA and tax credits) was when I was made redundant in 1999. I remember there were certain problems thrown up by the fact that I was claiming both, started a redundancy training course which meant a complicated system of signing off JSA to attend the course and then signing back ON to JSA in order to keep payments up, only one person in the Job Centre was able to understand the process fully. My then wife managed to take on part time work and I asked at the job centre if this would affect payments - they looked at the contract and said no. We carried on in this way for several months before getting a call to say we weren't entitled to JSA because of her work and wanted a repayment. My wife explained the situation and they agreed to let the matter drop. We heard nothing further. Since this time - 15 years ago - I have gone back into full time employment, having worked for 3 companies plus my own company for 1 year and heard nothing up until now. I have also moved home and registered my new address on the electoral register. My current company got the demand, with a copy sent to my previous address of several years ago. Presumably I would have had the right to appeal or arrange a less difficult payment regime had they sent to my current address. If they have my work address details how are my home address details so out of date? I haven't lived there for 3-4 years. I assume that where public funds are concerned there is no rule of statute barred? The problem is, after 15 years I have no documents relating to the period of alleged overpayment nor names of people who dealt with the initial query - this seems a little unfair as it leaves me with no defence. Like I said, I'm paying so this isn't a scream for help to get out of payment but I'm extremely curious as to how this situation has come to pass. Hope this is the right area to post in.