interesting reply from lender re mig

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Repossession : One Thread

time after time i have requested paperwork to back up lenders shortfall claim but nothing ever sent case is now in the hands of the court just awaiting a hearing date. had an mig & asked the question why the lender was chasing due to this have been informed the following the society is under an obligation to repay the insurance company with a proportion of any monies recovered from you. Apparently recovery action has to be taken by the lender in its name because no contract is entered into between me & them. I note on your site it states that the law does not allow the lender to take me to court for money that they claim is owed under an agreement between them & a third party (do's & dont's section) is this correct as they are taking me to court. thanks libby.

-- libby croot (lilyboo@aol.com), November 24, 2001

Answers

This is an interesting issue. The issue is that they cannot take you to court for money that they claim is owed under a contract whose terms and conditions you have not been able to see. This most often applies to MIGs, which most lenders routinely claim are confidential.

If you have a letter from the lender claiming that you cannot see the MIG because it is confidential, then you can and should defend against the MIG element of their claim by saying that you were not allowed to see the contract that set this part of the debt up.

Here's another reader's view on this: "I would have thought that you were definitely entitled to see the policy and or contract. How can you enter into a legal agreement without seeing the contract first? I'll check but - IMHO - they would need to provide you with copies of documents even if you agreed to the policy.

Fact of law coming up. If they send you a contract and you agree to this contract and sign it etc, that's fine. If they introduce additional terms for that contract or add another contract to the original, they must send you copies and notice of this. And this appears to be the case with MIGs. If they don't let you see the MIG then you can rely on the argument that these terms are not part of the original contract.

They may have a clause like 'this MIG is available for you to see at anytime, contact us etc, etc.' But if they were making the MIG available then it would be odd that they are now claiming it is confidential.

"I did this with Lloyds Bank two years ago with an insurance policy. They tried to rely on the fact that the contract was subject to additional terms & conditions that were not in the original policy schedule etc. I argued that these terms did not form part of the original contract etc. They tried their luck a few more times until the magic words 'court' were mentioned. They backed down, paid me up and gave me some extra dosh to apologise, all without accepting liability and without prejudice of course!"

Even though you may be able to get the MIG part of the claim thrown out because of the confidentiality issue, they may still have the right to go to court for a judgement on the other parts of their claim. In which case, what you can do is try to get the MIG part thrown out on grounds that a confidential contract is an unfair contract and then ask the judge that they have removed the sticking point that the MIG represented and you are happy to negotiate with the lender over the rest so you would like the case to be dismissed while the two of you argue it out without wasting the court's time.

Lee

Lee

-- Lee (repossession@home-repo.org), November 25, 2001.


Nice one Lee !! Good luck Libby.

Joy.

-- Joy Harker (fightingback@harker.go-plus.net), November 25, 2001.


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