Has anyone any experience of a Freezing Order imposed on them. I was an employee of a Firm of Solicitors who closed due to various problems and the Partners have told their Insurance Company Zurich it was all my fault. They lied to the High Court claiming in their Affidavit I owed many millions of pounds worth of assets which is a joke and the Judge believed them and a Freezing Order was imposed on me and my wife last September. We were separating and selling the matrimonia home and a buy to let property but even though on one property it had exchanged contracts the Freezing Order stopped the sale, the deposit used to buy a property for my wife and two children aged 2 years old and 8 months old was lost and we have not been allowed to make mortgage payments, credit card payments for 6 months. We need at least £20,0000 for a solicitor to act on our behalf but we have no money and the Freezing Order simply stops us having any monies other than income support and hopefully housing benefit which has just been applied for. Does anyone have any idea as to how you can get legal assistance for a civil matter when legal aide does not cover this and no firm of solicitors will act on your behalf without monies on account. Emotionally not only is my life wrecked but that of my wife and my children as the simplest of things like my sons nursery payments are not allowed meaning he has been taken out of nursery and away from his friends. Terrance

If you talk to your local Citizens Advice Bureau, they will certainly give you advice. It may not include legal aid but there is no harm in asking.

Citizens Advice stated this was too complicated for them but gave a list of solicitors that dealt with such cases all of which required from £15,000 on account of fees to £20,000 on fees as the case against us is a Civil matter, the problem appears that unless in this Country you have a lot of money to obtain Justice, you simply have to accept the legal process which only looks after the rich or criminals and the rest of us are left with no defence to put up any fight against liars especially when dealing with bent solicitors who themselves have stolen clients money to pay their own Insurance Company the fees for having Indemnity Insurance cover to protect all their legal costs when claiming against members of staff but thanks for responding, feeling rather alone in the World with all this catastrohpic financial and emotional damage this has caused for the last 6 months and continues to do so on a daily basis. Terrance

Yes - I have had a freezing order due to divorce - put by legal aided solicitors who also froze my brother's assets and had been sued for damages.

If you are a lawyer - I will not help you. Otherwise I will.

No I am not a Lawyer I simply worked in a Firm of Solicitors along with my wife and other members of staff she and I had a marketing company that visited house sites and sold the Firm of solicitors it is all very complicated but no we are not legally trained we are being done for breach of contract or something and have been fitted up with mortgage fraud on 3000 files we know we are innocent we have hard evidence we just don't have legal fees to defend ourselves, the allegations came as a huge shock and the freezing order without notice worldwide and stays with us for what I believe is years if not forever unless we can defend the claim and get it uplifted. Monies on account with a Firm of solicitors begged from friends family etc will get a meeting with the claimants solicitors who are suggesting they will drop all action against us providing we go away quietly but we are left having to go bankrupt which I suppose one can live through, trying to find somewhere to live no different many but the emotional impact will stay with us forever and what I find is totally unacceptable and to live with for myself and others in this situation is how can someone get a freezing order on you when they themseleves are bent their evidence is false but because they have endless amounts of money or wealthy financial insurance companies backing them, the legal system works in their favour only. I am happy to speak to anyone supply information to anyone, I have faxed every national newspaper, the BBC, my MP etc etc but all I get is this is a civil matter you need to find the monies for a top London solicitor as you are up against the best in the UK. To get this to a Trial Court firstly it could take up to 3 years and secondly I would need in excess of £300,000 possibly half a million pounds to be defended and my wife and myself are forced to claiming benefits. I await hearing from you, some small light at the end of huge tunnel.

Ok. I hate lawyers. Understand what a freezing order and what it does.

A freezing order or mareva is used to protect a claimant against a defendant selling assets etc when a claim has been launched. To get a sucessful freezing order is to use a mechanism of affivadit and an undertaking of the claimant to pay you the defendant if the freezing order is inappropriate. It also allows you to get a lawyer up to a certain amount and an allowance for living costs and pay bills. If it affects sale of property - you will take the matter back to court. You state that the freezing order was placed over the matrimorial home which means that the freezing order must be served on your wife. The freezing order cannot stop you paying bills unless they have frozen all assets which is illegal and unlawful.

The success of the freezing order is that it must be served on notice or without notice and must return to court within 7 days. From your posting you were at trial and the freezing order is now in place. The freezing order can only last until the end of those proceedings or varied by an application from you or the claimant. The claimant will not return to court (to increase costs and reduce your assets) and since the claimant has got the freezing order it is down to you to get this overturned or varied.

You state that you are on benefits or forced on benefits - this is a good situ actually as applications are free. The claimant will have to pay lawyers to defend your application.

You state that you are innocent but there is no evidence of a criminal trial or civil claim. You don't state this.

You don't state who issued the freezing order Zurich or the partners. You don't state this.

You state this is a worldwide freezing order not a UK one - which is strange as the jurisdiction of the court is only England and Wales.

You are also lucky in that a recent ECJ case has declared freezing orders incompatiable with UN and EC HR in regards to property and family rights and that your case can be withdrawn.

Moreover, you can force the claimant to put a large deposit into court to maintain the freezing order and that you can get the freezing order so varied that the value to the claimant is worthless or removed.

You can get the judge to vary the freezing order or cancel it and that it must not be there for longer than 3 months and that the claimant will need to come back to court with evidence to maintain it. If you are innocent, you should issue a notice of damage application for unlimited damages against the claimant now pending the outcome of the first trial and that you will seek the undertaking and costs at full indemity rates.

You state that they allege mortgage fraud but no other information here. Is there a criminal action or civil case from the claimant.

Take your money back from the lawyers on account and do it yourself. Do not feed lawyers !!

There are positives here - more information needed.

We wished to contest the freezing order from day one but our first solicitor stated the claim had to be issued, the claimants solicitors took nearly 3 months to do this, my wife responded direct so as not to run up legal costs as her father had already lent money on account to the solicitors and she paid £5k on top from her Barclaycard, anyway the claim in relation to civil matters came and a new date for court was fixed but this was adjourned at the last minute as the claimants solicitors stated they needed to amend the claim due to further information. They have 3000 files that my wife and I and other secretarial staff worked on, supposidly incentives were not informed to Lenders and those properties have now been repossessed and due to an SRA investigation the Firm closed down last March but the Partners are now saying that we along with others conspired with the intention of causing damage to the Partners the claim also states we acted dishonestly and fraudulently. My wife fell out with our solicitor and transferred to another, she was allowed to sell a small parcel of land to raise a further £60k to assist with further legal costs. The claimants are the Partners of the solicitors who under their indemnity insurance Zurich are being financed all legal costs. This is a civil matter to be kept quiet private between all parties, however one of the other members of staff obtained for himself without our knowledge 8 illegal mortgages but the view is he has no real assets or finances and within the evidence to the Court the investigators have stated the best person to go after is actually my wife as she has two buy to let properties purchased some years ago with equity which is untrue, one property is in negative equity and the other was sold subject to contract but under the Freezing Order the sale was not allowed to proceed. My wife and I were separating prior to the Freezing Order and the matrimonial home had exchanged contracts, she took out briding finance for a new property for her and our two children this property legally completed the day the Freezing Order was served on us, the purchaser of the matrimonial home has lost his deposit and my wife is now in a difficult situation because even though through family and the DSS she can pay the first charge on her new property the bridging finance is becoming a problem. The claimants solicitors have written to all our Lenders encouraging they repossess the properties stating it is their mitigating obligation as they have not allowed the mortgage paymnts to be made for 6 months now. We were allowed living expenses from the bank account that has our main mortgage on the matrimonial home but they have closed on us and would not allow any monies to us because of the mortgage arrears, my wife has another bank account which she was not allowed to use and told to open up a new bank account for her DSS payments to be made. Just before christmas they would not allow any payments for the car MOT and tax stating this was not a required living expense but my wife with the two young children needs transport due where she lives, she argued this and threatened to get the BBC involved (which she has Panorma who are actively looking into things) which did result in having permission for her parents to get the car back on the road. The Partners actually have committed very serious offences, they have stolen clients money at the closure of the business to pay Zurich the run off costs and they made a claim to Zurich for criminal monies to be returned to certain people, we have pushed for this to become a criminal matter but when we make too much noise we are threatened, our properties have been subject to break-ins, our post has been tampered with, one of the Partners has written to my wifes mother requesting £100k on receipt of which he will drop all action against us and my wife when collecting a few things from the matrimonial home was physically attacked, her ankle was broken and she underwent surgery in October and told in no uncertain terms to keep quiet. How do we speak to you direct, no one is going to want to have their telephone numbers plastered on this page but I am happy to let you have my fax number so we can exchange information. Our solicitor states at the meeting on 10th Feb they are looking to walk away from all of this but we are left with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of debt, my job I was due to start overseas in October was stopped as they would not allow me the monies for a flight, our credability and reputation are ruined, the business my wife has was also frozen to the extent she is not allowed to pay the Accountants, Inland Revenue, telephone bill which obviously has now been disconnected, the claimants solicitors want the business struck off with Companies house and put into liquidation it just goes on and on. By the way with the first Affidavit to get the freezing order my wife objected strongly to certain facts to which she provided evidence, we then found out that a second Affidavit was done apologising to the Court for such errors but the Court still maintained the Freezing Order to stay indefinately, therefore the claimants deliberatly lied, failed to give full disclosure of the claimants being under investigation by the SRA and the Court still felt their credability was honest and unquestionable. My wife was not in the office full time from 2005 until its closure due to have children etc but evidence of letters on the clients file are being blamed on her to which she and I know nothing about. The Partner of the Firm dealt with our purchase and it would appear registered the boundaries incorrectly and again this is part of the claim as the sale was stopped, the boundary problems at the property make it a white elephant and in any event this together with the other properties are being pushed into repossession. The cross undertaking by the Partners to pay damages etc is pointless as they themselves have no monies so this indemnity is a joke even if we won our debts caused by the Order could not be met by the claimants. £60k was stolen from the client account by the Partners of the Firm and we have a print out of the client names and amounts actually taken of which £36k was paid to Zurich to cover their run off costs. What do you think now?

Ok. Lots of Information but I can help you.

1. The matter is the freezing order. You need to get this varied or removed immediately.

2. You need to make an application to the High Court to get the freezing order removed immediately due to incorrect service and that there was no proof of a debt. The fact that they have issued a claim 3 months later is incorrect process. This has to be done correctly. A Freezing Order cannot have been issued on poor evidence or without a detailed claim at the point of issuance.

If the partners have no cross undertaking then the court will remove this. We can work on this.

3. Go to your local Police Station and make a report about the breakins and the post. Change your phone and/or ask BT to monitor your calls. Get a crime reference number and any new item coming to the house report it back to the police. Explain to them that you have ligitation with ex-partners and name them to the police. (harassment is a criminal offence). Also mention that your relative(s) have been attacked.

4. In the meantime sign on for income support, housing benefit etc.State on the application that your assets are held under an asset freezing order.

4.1 (once you are on benefits you can get legal aid). Play the legal system - you will have the state on your side and they have Zurich. The court will provide legal assistance under acticle 6 ERA (it has to).

4.2 If you know that an SRA have been investigated against the partners, are Zurich aware ? (this may remove their legal assistance).

4.3 Apply for a formal struck out of the application at the same time of the freezing order application (under basis) of SRA application/investigation.

5. Play the game with the freezing Order. Send a copy to your credit card company, mortgage lender and bank explaining that this is now in place and any dissapption of the assets would be a breach of that order. They will not sell any asset and will go back to court and you will not have to pay any interest - this will give you time to focus on the freezing order.

6. I am interested in bent lawyers - If the company folded - it must be due to the lawyers/partners. If you state that you have not done anything wrong or fraud, I would get the evidence together and send a letter to Zurich explaining that you will defend this and that they will be liable for all costs at indemity rates including the undertaking under the freezing order. If you have acted in any way that they think they have a case they will come after you.

I think the best way is to prepare a case to the law society and the solicitors governing body and getting them on the back foot. Otherwise you are in the situation of being stuck permanently in legal actions.

If there is misselling by the lawyers etc there could be a mission for you to go to the police and make a formal complaint regarding fraud. It may be worth sending a dossier to the FSA whom the lawyers would be regulated.

If you have evidence that the clients took money from clients accounts - give this to the police. They can investigate. The best way is to use the right people.

Remember if you have done nothing wrong - justice will prevail. Remember the courts are lawyers run by lawyers (you should know this working with them). It will be an uphill struggle.

7. I noticed that you stated that they wanted to stop litigation but you are faced with costs. I would get this in writing from your lawyer and use this for the strike out application. This reduces their claim to a strike out and improves your applicaiton for Zurich to pay costs and damages.

8. Strategy - Remove Freezing Order / Claim against you and then seek recovery for costs and damages. Zurich can become liable if they entered into a funding of litigation knowing that there was no option for success.

All of the points are easy - just need to complete in a simple approach.

GA-D are you still out there?

You seem to know alot about worldwide freezing orders, i need some advice could you possibly help?