Hello, I am new to all of this so apologies. I am scared silly. I left Australia in June 2012. I had to leave due to splitting up with my defacto boyf which was awful. I lost everything and had to start again. This included not being able to get a job for nearly a year and couch surfing (homeless) for 6 months! I have eventually got myself back on my feet - job, home etc. I had a debt which I left in OZ which was joint with my ex - it was a credit card and current account. I have just been contacted via letter by stevendrake demanding $5000 debt payment. They have also given me 14 days to reply so they can deal with me amicably! I really have no idea what to do - I have had an unknown number calling my mobile the same time every night. Can anyone help?

Hey All, Yes it's CC again, i've read a lot of the forums and am just after piece of mind that i'm doing the right thing. I left Oz (WA) in late 2015 with CC and Bank debt which is now defaulted and after 3 yrs CC are now chasing me for payment with their incredible interest fees. I know that it's not Statute Barred so that's not an option. I received a phone call a few days back at 2am from them asking me about the debt etc. In my sleep addled brain I finally managed to answer a couple of security questions but that was about it, I didn't give them my UK address and had woken up sufficiently to supply them with my secondary email account that I barely check. They do know i'm in the UK due to the time difference/phone number called. The only people in Oz that have my mobile number is the ATO and my Ex-Wife so i'm not sure how they'd have gotten that anyway. They don't have my UK address and i'm reaching out to her to advise to ignore them (let them know we're divorced and she doesn't care where I am) and if they harass her to let me know and to make a complaint to the relevant people. I'm just worried for her as she was just recently released from a hospital after having a mania episode and don't want her harassed and potentially set off again. Should I just ignore them?? I've already setup my mobile to not allow incoming international calls and it's easy enough to set Gmail up to ban from certain domains. I'm currently un-employed, bills here and back living with my parents (yep living the dream....), so have very little in the way of assets but i'm reluctant to engage with them unless I have to. Thanks in advance NFT

Hi I'm really interested in this, not because I want to completely avoid debt but because I want to gain some leverage in negotiations over a loan that I'm struggling to pay. At the moment the lender has rejected any attempts I've made to reduce the monthly amount and are now threatening court action. I'll be leaving the UK for Australia soon to rejoin my family so I'm considering this option. Just a question to clarify, I understand that a CCJ is enforceable in the courts in Aus so need to avoid this by being out of jurisdiction. What I don't understand is why, once the debt is sold to an Aus collection firm, they can't start proceedings in Aus to recover the money. Surely if they own the debt, they can legitimately start a court action in Aus for the debt. Do they not just because it's too expensive it is there a legal reason why not? Thanks in advance.

I am looking for any advice regarding my debt issues. I left the UK almost 5 years ago to Live in Aus. On leaving I paid back all debts except a bank loan which I continued to repay for nearly 18 months. Due to financial stress I had no option but to use UK credit cards to pay for food, fees etc. I still managed to make repayments for these for about 18 months. In short I owe approx. 20k GB before any interest is added. I have never until last week received any correspondence regarding the non payment of this debt here in Aus. I was aware that a letter or 2 had been sent to my in laws house addressed chasing the money. These were returned to sender stating that I did not and have never lived at that address. Things have taken a real turn for the worse. My Mother in law died recently. Letters are still being sent to her most recently by Ruthbridge, now threatening court action, bailiffs etc. I have read how Ruthbridge use these scare tactics to illicit a response from the debtor. However the mail is now being opened by Brother in laws etc who in the midst of compiling accounts for probate are now scared that this will effect the execution of the will and think that the Bailiffs will be entitled to seize goods in my mother in laws house and even make claim the house itself. I wish to do the right thing by my family - all of which knew previously of our debt but had never been personally involved until now. What do I do? Selfishly I cant afford to or want to repay the debt. If there is no option to then I will. But being in a different country I am stuck as to what the best course of action should be for my immediate family on Aus and my extended family in UK. Any advise would be most helpful

I have taken a loan in Aus and had been chased by Credit Corp. They tired to contact at my persent office and failed to contact and finally CC had forwarded it to GCS. GSC sent an email informing to pay the full amt. I am worried as the GSC have my current employer address with them. Can they take any legal action on me or shall I ignore them. I am not in a good postion to repay the ammount, Please help me

Hello, I am new to the forum. I have been reading though previous posts doing some research as I am pre-empting a difficult situation on our horizon. Hoping some of you may be able to give us advice on how best to deal with things if and when they occur. We have been living in Australia for almost a year. Before moving we had our house for sale for a year but unfortunately it didn’t sell so we had to rent it out. The rental income does not cover the mortgage but after months of negotiating, the mortgage company agreed we could change to interest only payments for 12 months. However after this time has passed we will be back to a monthly shortfall of over £100. Of course we knew all this before we left and had things gone smoothly we would have managed to upkeep things. However our first tenants went bankrupt, stopped paying us and consequently our payments with the mortgage company were missed too. We tried our best to find what we could but it is now the account is £3500 in arrears. Fortunately the tenants left at the end of the 6 months tenancy without any fuss and new tenants moved in the next day. The new tenants are paying in full and on time BUT they are flexing their muscles in unnerving ways. Looooong story won’t trouble you with the details but the essence of which is they have made numerous tenancy breaches, are refusing to let us advertise the property as for sale and we highly expect that at the end of their tenancy they will not leave. The property management company is has advised us to prepare ourselves as things are looking ‘messy.’ So it’s positive that rent is being paid but we will still have the shortfall, are unable to even try to sell the house and potentially have squatters. If this does happen we would have to take them to court to get them out and we do not have the money to do this. Also these arrears are still outstanding and we have no means to pay them and we are getting threats of repossession. If the house was repossessed I understand the mortgage company would sell the house for whatever they can get for us leaving us with the outstanding (negative equity) debt + fees. I don’t know how we could afford that. In the UK we also have debts of about £16,000 across credit cards, overdrafts and loans. If this were to happen we would have to declare ourselves bankrupt in the UK, but I guess my first question is can we do this from Aus? We have no financial assets left but I understand in bankruptcy they will take your possessions. Will they take our cars from us in Aus. Not that they are highly valuable – just A to B’ers but thats exactly it, without our cars we cannot get to work. In the back of my mind I am also thinking do we declare ourselves bankrupt before it even comes to that to save us the stress of these tenants and the problems they are causing us. I struggle to see a positive outcome to this but I am hoping that somebody out there may have a different viewpoint and see something that we don’t. Maybe we are just bogged down with all the negativity that we cannot see the way out. Also if anybody knows of a company that specialises in dealing with international debt I would be very interested to hear. Thanks so much.