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p>To be fair the facts of this case were unusual. Mrs Bhasin was deserted by her husband and was concerned that she would not be able to pay the mortgage. Mr & Mrs Hastings, 'friends' of hers, offered to take over the property from her raise finance to pay off the mortgage and let her live rent-fee in the house until she could repay them. Mr Hastings said he was a solicitor and would deal with all the necessary paperwork. In fact, unknown to Mrs Bhasin, he was a struck-off solicitor.
You can already see that something was bound to go wrong, which it did. Mr & Mrs Hastings took out a new loan with GMAC-RFC Ltd to pay off the existing loan but they had trouble servicing it, so they took out a nine-month bridging loan with Cheval Bridging Finance. The money was used to pay off the GMAC loan but they paid no interest or principal on the bridging loan. Mrs Bhasin did not know about the repayment difficulties nor did she know about the bridging loan.
Possession proceedings were taken against the Hastings and Mrs Bhasin as she was in occupation of the property. She sought an adjournment of the proceedings. The Hastings paid £100,000 towards more than half a million pounds owed on the bridging loan but nothing else.
Mrs Bhasin in turn took proceedings against the Hastings and got judgment against them. However, at the time of considering an adjournment of the possession proceedings, the Hastings had paid nothing else.
Should Mrs Bhasin be granted an adjournment of the possession proceedings while she tried to gather money from the Hastings and elsewhere to pay off the loan? On reviewing her finances, the Court of Appeal, did not feel that she would be able to clear the loan in sufficient time and therefore refused her application.
The moral of the story? When friends offer to do a good deed, it may not always work out that way.
However, the case was also instrumental in dealing with two additional points. One concerning Mrs Bhasin's title to the property, the other being the question of a reasonable period for repaying the bridging loan. I shall deal with these in the next update of Bridging from the Bench.
To be fair the facts of this case were unusual. Mrs Bhasin was deserted by her husband and was concerned that she would not be able to pay the mortgage. Mr & Mrs Hastings, 'friends' of hers, offered...
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