Separated mother-of-four who made €520 a month mortgage payments to lose home

An order to allow Stepstone Mortgage Funding Ltd repossess the home of a separated mother-of-four who was making repayments of €520 a month was granted at the High Court yesterday.

The subprime lender had previously been granted an order for possession of the woman’s home, but applied to renew it after time ran out to execute the repossession.

The woman, from Waterford, had borrowed €170,000 with her husband in July 2007 at an interest rate of 9.27 per cent. The couple had separated and fallen behind with their payments. At a previous hearing, the woman had sought more time to try to get maintenance payments from her husband, but she told Mr Justice John Cooke yesterday she had not been successful.

New proposals
She said she had been paying €130 a week to the lender for the last two years and it was as much as she could afford, given her children needed money for school and other things.

“The mortgage company doesn’t think it is enough,” Mr Justice Cooke said. He told the woman that unless there were new proposals to repay the debt he did not have the jurisdiction to refuse to renew the order.

The solicitor for the lender said though the woman was making repayments of €130 a week, the monthly payment should have been €1,100. The arrears stood at €33,300 and were “only going one way”, he said. He agreed to give an undertaking not to repossess the property for six months and Mr Justice Cooke renewed the order.

Orders for possession

Two other execution orders were renewed yesterday and 10 orders for possession were made, four granted to Stepstone Mortgages, two each to Danske Bank and Start Mortgages Ltd and one each to ACC Bank and Ulster Bank.

One of the orders for possession granted to Stepstone Mortgages involved a family home in Co Cavan.

The family borrowed €360,000 in August 2007 at an interest rate of 7.44 per cent and with monthly payments of €2,224. Counsel for the lender said the couple fell behind with their repayments and now owed arrears of almost €82,700.

In January this year, they had returned a financial statement to see if they would be eligible for a new arrangement, but the lender had written to say their mortgage was “unsustainable”.

Mr Justice Cooke granted the order for possession with a stay of execution of six months.