 which will prove definitively the date you became the legal owner and so became responsible for the utilities. Send this evidence and also any known forwarding address for the previous owners. You should have taken metre readings when yo){kind=link}
Ask a Lawyer: the house buying process is bad enough without sellers that are awful to deal with
Dear Ask a Lawyer,
My husband and I bought our first house twelve months ago. The process was fraught, not least because the sellers were awful to deal with. They were divorcing and so we felt they wanted to extract the maximum cash from us as they were each buying a new house.
At the time it was a “sellers’ market” and when various defects were discovered by our surveyor and our solicitor, they just refused to budge on the price agreed and we ended up having to go ahead knowing we would have to immediately pay to put right some of their botched jobs.
Now to add insult to injury we are getting utility bills addressed to us but for usage during the previous owners’ period of ownership and the utility company is threatening debt collection and bailiffs. Also, other “red letters” are arriving addressed to the previous owners, which look like debts.