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can i get away with this ?


La Roche
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guess i feel kinda cheeky or a cheap skate for asking this but thought it was worth asking the  question anyway .......... OK if you had 8000 pounds worth of debt on your credit cards in the UK and want to walk away can the card comanys  chase you for this money in France ?? yes i know my morals say i should pay them .........
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[quote user="La Roche"]guess i feel kinda cheeky or a cheap skate for asking this but thought it was worth asking the  question anyway .......... OK if you had 8000 pounds worth of debt on your credit cards in the UK and want to walk away can the card comanys  chase you for this money in France ?? yes i know my morals say i should pay them .........[/quote]

They sure can, under the Hague Convention, which allows (in the UK) the County Court to work across borders.

However, you must ask yourself if they would bother for a trifling 8 grand? ....

 

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[quote user="nicktrollope"]

However, you must ask yourself if they would bother for a trifling 8 grand? ....

[/quote]

Anybody do a runner owing me 8 grand and I'd make a lot of effort to find them.....[:)]

and so will the Card companies.

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[quote user="La Roche"]guess i feel kinda cheeky or a cheap skate for asking this but thought it was worth asking the  question anyway .......... OK if you had 8000 pounds worth of debt on your credit cards in the UK and want to walk away can the card comanys  chase you for this money in France ?? yes i know my morals say i should pay them .........[/quote]

Is this the same La Roche who's first posting on this forum on 24 May in Legal Issues in France under the thread We need you (sic) help please was whingeing about being stitched up by the family he is in the process of buying a property from?

So it's O K for you to do it but not others. Or is the credit card debt you are trying to walk away from the deposit you put on that property? [6]

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My own experiences suggest that there are quite a lot of British people in France who are on the run from something. They stay here for a while, then as things catch up with them, they have to move on elsewhere - to Spain, Holland, Ireland....

 

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There are agencies who would just love to chase you for  £8000  adding their fees to your debt....they do very well from people who do a runner oweing money .....and the legal and recovery agent fees for getting the money from you outside  the UK would be huge ..I once saw a row of expensive  UK Registered cars outside a Spannish police station ready to go on a transporter ....I suspect some still  owned by UK finance companies whos drivers had  found themselves  being introduced to the occupiers of the building .....you might get away with not repaying it ......but then  are you feeling lucky !

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or you might get away with it temporarily, and then want to return to UK one day where it may well come back to haunt you.

As one person has already stated, running away from problems (albeit I can see the temptation, although I wouldn't do it myself) whether they are financial or emotional, rarely pays off in long run. 

But it's your call ..

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I was chased all the way to France by a UK based credit agency for a BT bill worth £85...

I had paid it but the cheque had gone astray in the post, I had moved with no following address communicated to BT, so they thought I had done a runner... [Www]

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Totally ignoring morality :

If you need to ask on this forum you cannot do it. You do not know where to begin

If you are contemplating doing this for £ 8000. You are not even into the petty cash of establishing a new identity properly.

Are you happy to abandon all links to familly and friends ?  A French mobille number let alomne a land line is enough

Every year new problems will come up. At present you could probably swop your driving license for a French licence without an ex Policeman being able to ring up for your French address. Within two years no way.

There are now links between the register of births and the register of deaths which prevent you obtaining the ID of a child who died in infancy. So that method of getting a second passport described by Len Deighton, Adam Dennant and Frederick Forseyth.

You cannot get registered with CPAM without an NIC number which anybody who checks your work records will be able to find.

 

 

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I approach this from the legal standpoint and it being my profession for too many years.  Your mind (its mens rea) tells you what is right or wrong.  Say in a shop you give £10  get change for £20 then you are aware of it then walk away.  Its theft plain and simple.  Theft Act . 

Imagine an argument in a pub then you hit someone.  OK a crime but can be argued over.

Imagine the same argument in the pub you walk out to your van get a crow bar then walk back to the pub and hit the guy with the bar a whole different ball game.  It is premeditated.

If you wish to jump ship for £8K do not think that the guys back home will not come for you.

I have for a client obtained judgment and the Defendant went back home to the UK we followed him and got our money and it was for somewhat less than £8k.

Here I sometimes think I am from a different planet and probably some of you would say that I am.  However thats me.

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[quote user="Llwyncelyn"]

I approach this from the legal standpoint and it being my profession for too many years.  Your mind (its mens rea) tells you what is right or wrong.  Say in a shop you give £10  get change for £20 then you are aware of it then walk away.  Its theft plain and simple.  Theft Act .  [/quote]

But Llewellyn it is not theft unless the court can prove that you were aware of it, but  this is not the correct analogy.

Without blinding people with science, the OP is contemplating walking away from his debt, he wonders if he would get away with it in France - probably, it depends if they think it is easy to trace him.  He could walk away again if they did and many do ( I have seen it done many times in the UK).  If he went back to the UK (possibly) they would have obtained judgment against him and he would have to face it (probably).  This is not a morality question as the OP knows it is wrong.

 

And Llewelyn, to answer your question, yes you are from another plant!![:D][:D][:D]

Georgina

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LL's point about theft is perfectly valid - and relevent to the question raised in this thread.

There is an offence of dishonestly inducing a creditor to wait for payment or to forgo payment with the intention of permanently defaulting on all or part of an existing liability (Theft Act 1978, section 2 (1) (b) - now replaced by the Fraud Act 2006).  During my banking days, I used this legislation for pursuing fraudsters and, on occasions, recidevist debtors...

 

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I found myself deeply in debt through no fault of my own.  My daughter had started a clothing business which was going very well and I had let her raise some of the capital on my name. She had what should have been a routine operation in a private hospital in the Uk and  was left permanently disabled.  I tried to run her business for four months but I  know nothing about the retail clothing business and I was also caring for her four children and visiting her in hospital and I am well  into my 60's. We had to close the business with huge debts.  We put her house on the market to pay the debts but it needed some renovation and took a year to sell. The debts mounted and I hardly slept for a year, borrowing from one credit card to make the repayments on another and so on.  Finally, I had to sell my lovely lttle home in  France that I had worked so hard to get, and go into rented accommodation.  I was able to pay off all her debts and had enough left to put a deposit on a little house for her and her children.  Her own house sold but she had to pay a huge penalty for early repayment as she had raised a business loan against it.

I seriously considered declaring myself bankrupt but I did not know how that would affect my status in France.  All the debts were UK based, either to banks or credit cards.  I had paid every single private creditor, given staff proper notice, etc.

I am a retired tax inspector and have always lived well within my budget.  I didn't spend a penny on myself other than for food, petrol, etc. until all the debts were paid.

My daughter has been pursuing a medical negligence claim for nearly four years and it is now nearing settlement.  She will be able to pay me back a certain amount, but I will never get back to the position I was in - house prices have gone up and I am now too old to get a full mortgage in France.

It never occurred to me to renege on my debts - if I had declared myself bankrupt I would have repaid all the debts in full and got myself discharged as soon as possible.  I live on a very limited pension income but I still have my integrity intact and although she came very close to death my daughter is still alive and her children still have their mother, albeit unable to work, work very far, or recover from post traumatic stress.

I am enraged by the idiots who borrow thousands on credit cards, spend it on cars, clothes and holidays and then blame the credit card companies for lending them the money.

The other truly unfuriating thing is that people think we live in a 'compensation culture' .  Well, my daughter was very nearly killed by a surgeon's negligence and lived in agony from a perforated stomach for weeks.  The negligence was blindlingly obvious to everyone concerned, but she has been put through hell, having to travel all over the country, which is very painful for her, to see various specialists and medical experts.  There has never been an apology, of course, as the Medical Defence Union would not allow that, and it took months and months to get her notes from the hospital involved.

So, if you think getting compensation is easy, you are profoundly wrong!

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many thanks for the VARIED responses , even those who found it in their good nature for a personal attack although this is only my second posting . I only asked this question because i spoke to someone last month who told me they had never paid back their credit card companys and seemed proud to boast about it and had got away with it for over 3 years . If i was going to do such an act trust me it would have to be more than a crummy 8,000 pounds  . NO i would not feel guilty either as these people make billions , if on the other hand it was a person , my heart would not allow me !!!  ( and i worked for a USA + French bank in the city for 11 years )
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[quote user="La Roche"]  If i was going to do such an act trust me it would have to be more than a crummy 8,000 pounds  .

[/quote]

A crummy £8,000 pounds ?

You should try living on my pension sunshine, What I couldn't do with a 'crummy' £8,000..............................................

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So if you worked in banking and understand finance and it's only a crummy £8,000, why ask the question in the way that you did?  Perhaps that's why you got the responses that you received?

And as for just posting here twice and getting pounced on, as a newbie you don't know the history of this forum so you probably don't know about previous idiot posting from other newbies and trolls.

 

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Well said Bugbear and Tony - and Monaco, my heart goes out to you!

As for you La Roche, how do you expect people to react to posts such as yours? We could all be forgiven for wondering what parts are true. As Tony points out, with the previous profession you claim to have had, you would know the answers to the question you asked in the first place. So why ask it?

And if you think £8000 is a crummy amount, why are you wasting your time on here as opposed to sailing around the Med in your yacht?

I think a little bit of humility is called for on your part......

Mel

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[quote user="La Roche"]guess i feel kinda cheeky or a cheap skate for asking this but thought it was worth asking the  question anyway .......... OK if you had 8000 pounds worth of debt on your credit cards in the UK and want to walk away can the card comanys  chase you for this money in France ?? yes i know my morals say i should pay them .........[/quote]

And another thing.......

If the above quote is as a result of you being told the tale by somebody you know (as you later claimed) why write it this way in the first place?

You need to read both your posts and decide what parts are true as they don't match up...

Mel

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[quote user="monaco"]I found myself deeply in debt through no fault of my own.  My daughter had started a clothing business which was going very well and I had let her raise some of the capital on my name. [/quote]

Sorry Monaco, I do not wish to seem harsh but I cannot understand how it was not your fault. You allowed your daughter to raise capital in your name - essentially, you were investing in the business.

Unfortunately, there is no law that states that 'any business that starts up will be profitable'.

It might be unfortunate that an illness meant the business failed - obviously, this was not considered in the business plan.

The percentage of businesses that fail is quite high so anyone investing in a business should consider it a risk.

Paul

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