How do I start my claim?
To get the ball rolling, in a nutshell, what you need to do is first of all decide which court your claim goes into. If we're talking about smaller, less significant claims, we're talking about county court basically. If you're litigant in person and you're looking at a debt recovery claim, we're talking about claims below five thousand pounds, those fit nicely into the county court. Now, to start your claim off, what you need to do is you need to get hold of a claim form. There are two avenues you can take. One, is you can start your claim via the internet, by going onto moneyclaim.gov.uk. You can do it all from the comfort of your own home. You don't have to see any court officials and all of the guidance is there for you. The more conventional route is to pop off to your local county court and ask them for a claim form, which they will give you one, along with some really good guidance notes. The only thing to note about where you'll end up in terms of courts, since we're talking about county court claims, is generally it would be in your local county court. But just to make sure if it's a debt recovery claim and against a defendant and that defendant defends the case, i.e. he says I don't owe you this money and he lives somewhere else, then your claim will be transferred to the that court where he lives. You'll need to take that on board from the beginning because travel expenses, again, could far out weigh the amount you expect to claim back.
