Mother complained she was made unfairly responsible for daughter's debt

What happened

Mrs J's daughter received legal aid to fund the legal costs involved in separating from her husband. During this time, Mrs J bought a property from her son-in-law and allowed her daughter to continue to live there.

Although Mrs J felt that her purchase was not related to her daughter's legal case, the Agency disagreed because it believed Mrs J's daughter had benefitted from the sale. As a result, it asked Mrs J for permission to register a charge against the property. This would mean that, if the property was sold, the Agency would be able to recover all or some of the money it had paid in legal aid funding to Mrs J's daughter.

Mrs J initially agreed to this request but she subsequently withdrew her permission and asked the Agency to remove the charge. This was because she did not accept that her daughter had benefitted from the purchase. However, although the Agency had not yet registered the charge, it refused Mrs J's request and continued to insist that her daughter had benefitted from the sale.

What we found

The Agency should have acted differently when Mrs J complained about the decision to register the charge, particularly as it had not actually registered the charge at that point.

The Agency should have explained how much money it might seek to recover more clearly. Although the legal aid funding was approximately £78,000, the amount the Agency sought to get back by registering the charge was far less than that.

The Agency also did not handle well an offer Mrs J had made to settle this issue.

We could not say whether Mrs J's daughter had benefitted from the sale of the property. However, we felt that if the Agency had acted appropriately before registering the charge, all parties would have understood this point.

Putting it right

The Agency took appropriate steps to have the charge removed from Mrs J's property and apologised to Mrs J for applying for the charge to be registered when it could not be certain that it was appropriate for it to do so at that time. It also apologised to Mrs J for its poor handling of her offer of settlement and paid her £250 in recognition of the worry, inconvenience and uncertainty its errors had caused her.