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Your legal rights: Rent or Mortgage Payments

In the event that you have missed a rent or mortgage payment, your mortgage lender or landlord may have the right to evict you. The process of doing this is known as “possession proceedings.” It is quite a long process. Thus, you should have plenty of time to come up with a plan for making repayments before the court gets involved.

In the event that you have a secured loan on your home or a second mortgage, and your lender refuses your payment plan, then you may be eligible for a time order through the courts. Such an order will enable you to keep your home.

A time order is a court order that a debtor applies for in order to make changes to the terms and conditions of a credit repayment agreement with a particular lender. Time orders can be utilized as a means of reducing payment and the interest rates on a credit agreement. Time orders are usually temporary measures. If, for instance, you are likely going to be able to continue making full payments at some point in the near future or are in the process of setting up an IVA, then a time order may be the right move for you.

Possession proceedings
The possession procedure begins with either notice from your landlord or an attorney’s letter from your mortgage lender warning you that you might be taken to court. Once you have received such a letter, you should receive a county court claim with a time and date for you to show up at the local county court. There, you will have to explain to the judge what your situation is and what you plan on doing about it.

The court will demand to see proof that you have indeed missed payments and that your landlord or mortgage lender have followed the proper procedure in trying to get you to pay. If your landlord has not followed the proper procedure, then the court may not make a possession order.

If you are a council tenant, the court must decide if the order is reasonable. They will take in to account whether or not you are vulnerable and whether or not you have made an effort to make payments.

In the event that the lender or landlord is successful, then the court will grant a possession order. But normally, if you begin to pay the money that you owe, then you will not be evicted from your home.

The court may allow you to pay off the mortgage repayments that you have missed over the years. It may also allow you to clear any payments you have missed on your council rent, depending on how much you can afford. If you subsequently miss payments, then the landlord or lender can ask for an eviction warrant. While you will not be warned of this beforehand, the court should inform you as to the date of eviction. You may then ask for a court hearing to ask the judge to suspend the eviction. You should do this before the eviction is due; if you do it afterwards, your application will most likely be refused. If you get in to this situation, then you should seek legal counsel.