My partner has some debts with a council for Housing Benefit Fraud, long story, none of it pretty. The council went to the county court and obtained an order for recovery. Cue the arrival of the bailiff the other day. To his credit he recognised she was vulnerable (she's pregnant and bankrupt). So he told her to email in and let them know what he said. They replied today with a form asking for income and expenditure. Now my question is thus, does she have to detail my personal income and expenditure? The debt was long ago, long before we got together. I am not responsible for paying her debts (she was the subject of serious domestic abuse, both physically and financially which is why she is in this mess).

have requested bankruptcy as when we went through all her paperwork it turned out there was a staggering £42k worth of debt in various unsecured forms! These included benefit overpayments from when she was in her past relationship to credit card debts and anything inbetween. Just glad its starting to get sorted now and hopefully very quickly!

Well im sure they cant take the sofa can they? There is a list of stuff somewhere that they arent allowed to take, might be worth searching!

Cheers for that. The debts at the moment are round £9k and thats the ones that have come to light most recently. Every time we think we've sorted one another one pops out the woodwork so going to have to take this one on the chin!

Right, there seems to be some confusion here as 2 of my posts have been combined. Please only take note of the post from September as the February thread has already been resolved (council immediately took the case back from the bailiffs and allowed us to pay a small amount each month without any bother whatsoever). The 3 liability orders that they are chasing now are from 10 years ago and relate to an address she lived at with her soon to be ex husband. She only fled the domestic violence in 2015 when the police and social services realised what was actually going on. She says she wasnt allowed to pay these monthly amounts back at the time of the unpaid CT as her husband was financially abusive and physically abusive. She wasnt allowed money, but if she was and paid a debt she got a beating for it. But we are currently exploring bankruptcy, as there are a large number of these debts that her husband and his kids took out in her name and we think its the only way where we can clear it all easily at this point in time. BTW the car was bought by my mother (on her credit card) so i can lay claim to that and her motorbike which she uses for work was also bought with my mothers credit card so i can claim that as mine as well. I just think its really crappy that a council can suddenly send the bailiffs round after 10 years with no real warning or request for payment prior to this. Especially with the time lapsed. Why cant LO's be statue barred like other debts?

Pretty much that. My partner has received 2 letters from Bristol and Sutor for 3 Liability Orders from Tamworth Borough Council. Amount owed is approximately £3000 with the compliance stage fees. The orders were dated 19th June 2007, 26th June 2007 and August 2007. All for the same address. I've written to the council on her behalf but got the usual fob off so have replied asking when they tried to get the debt repaid in the past. We both work, but both on very low incomes and just about keeping our head above water. We have 1 car which we share as I do the morning school runs and she does the after school collections then I have a motorbike for getting to work on (this is on HP). Is there anything I can do?

Yeah, it just reared its ugly head on Saturday morning in the post, so going to have to delve into this in much more detail.

All this happened before we got together. She was in a highly abusive relationship where her ex partner made all the claims, refused her access to the finances etc... All I know is that it went to court on the grounds of benefit fraud. But there was no order for repayment made by the court. She has told me that under caution the abuse issue was raided but for some reason this never made it to court, she doesn't know why either.

It's a letter N322 order for recovery of award.

The exact wording is: On 28th April 2017, A Proper Officer Sitting at the county court at ....... Considered the application and the award made to the applicant on ........ by the council under reference ......... And the court orders that 1. The applicant may enforce the award in court. 2. The respondent pay the applicants costs of the application, which are to be added to the amount unpaid under the award. 3. The amount enforceable is: Unpaid under the award £4500 (Including interest) Court Fee £44 Solicitors costs £0 Total £4544 Together with any further interest becoming due. So I've no idea now what's going on?

My partner has just received this order this morning. It appears it went before the county court yesterday but we received no notification about the hearing so were unable to provide a defence. The claimant is a borough council and the amount is for housing benefit overpayment of about £4500. We do have a defence in that at the time her and her children were subjected to severe physical, emotional and financial abuse. They only got out nearly 2 years ago after suffering 13 years like this. She was moved 150 miles away by police and social services. We know it would need repaying but we've not had a chance to sort a repayment through the court. I don't trust bailiffs to agree to a reasonable amount either. Can anyone tell me what our next step should be! Thanks.

The NoE was to new address.

The NoE is the first notice they are supposed to send out, hence charging. The compliance fee. These are the only letters received and the NoE is dated 13/1/17.

Did a google search and highways England are responsible for dartford crossing. Was reading an article about people getting fines because the anpr camera got the reg wrong. I'd contact highways England first to see what it relates to.

Via post. Don't know when it was received but they demanded first payment by 20/1. I know it's a bit late, my partner has hidden a lot of debt from me which is just coming to light now. As I say though, the area of concern is the amounts and wether the fact they've added the enforcement fee as well as the compliance fee has invalidated the NoE.