Responding to the claim form
Advice
When you receive a claim form, you only have 14 days to reply. It is important you do not ignore it. You will need to fill in the reply form which includes an Income and Expenditure breakdown (see attached spreadsheet for example) detailing all your income and outgoings. This will show the court how much money you have to spare each month to pay off the debt.
Your options include:
- File a defence if you disagree with the amount you owe. If you intend to defend the claim but need longer than 14 days to prepare your defence. Then you should, within the 14 days submit an acknowledgement of service, this gives you another 14 days to get your defence in.
- Admitting the claim if you agree you owe the money. You will also need to fill in a form giving the court details of your financial circumstances and you will be asked to make an offer of payment.
How we can help
Lestons can assist with all aspects of the claim form including, if required creating a financial plan for the court and/or creditor. Our aim would always be to avoid our clients having to go to court but instead arrange an amicable solution with their creditor. We can, if instructed appoint one of our excellent third-party independent financial advisors who can look at the overall situation and put forward a solution. Please note we make no commission from these referrals but do need clients to open a case so that we can prepare a financial brief for them. To gain our assistance you need to open a case, this is done by simply clicking on the link at the top of the page, you will then need to deposit a sum equal to one hour’s usage, upon receipt of these funds you will be assigned your personal caseworker who will telephone you to discuss the matter and make suggestions on how to proceed.
Please note your caseworker can only give generic advice, their role is to prepare your details for handling by our legal team and, if requested our appointed financial advisor and to act as your point of contact, they will also issue you with your Password and PIN, these will be needed to log onto your client dashboard. From your dashboard you will be able to manage and view every aspect of your case, upload documents, images, files etc.