She was now living in Norwich and was renting out her Peterborough house to lodgers. Miss Sadiqi’s account was in a large amount of arrears.
She had divorced her husband when there were suggestions of inappropriate behaviour from him towards their 7 year old daughter. There had been social workers and court cases. Her ex-husband was allowed supervised access to his daughter. Her ex-husband had repeatedly threatened to take their daughter back with him to Jordan permanently.
When Miss Sadiqi discovered that he had moved two roads away, a couple of minutes’ walk from her house, she decided he was stalking her and she moved with her daughter to her rented flat in Norwich.
Miss Sadiqi worked in a bookies and one day she was assaulted, a drunken customer struck her several times in the face and left her requiring surgery to realign her nose. She couldn’t work for a period of months.
Her history and any issues where a child may have been harmed are obviously handled as sensitively as possible.
Our main concern was that if she couldn’t work, and we repossessed her Peterborough house, would we in affect be making her homeless; she couldn’t afford the rent on her Norwich property.
After going through her finances, it became apparent that she actually had a large disposable income. As well as fairly substantial benefits she is entitled to, her family (luckily for her) were fairly wealthy and were providing a regular allowance.
In addition to the large rental income she was receiving, it didn’t explain why she hadn’t been paying her mortgage.
We didn’t believe the expenses she listed. The figures didn’t add up but we have decided that in light of all issues she has faced the only decent thing was to give her one last attempt at paying the mortgage on her Peterborough house. Hopefully she will start to pay.
Our anonymous blogger, The Insider works in a UK specialist lender’s repossessions department
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