Loanee claiming ownership of horse and keeping passport.

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hounddog79

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I am hoping that somebody may be able to help with my situation, as I am getting nowhere!

I loaned a horse to a "friend" in January/February, although there was no loan agreement drawn up as stupidly I trusted her. A month or so down the line, I discovered that she had gone online to the Horse Passport Agency and transferred ownership into her own name. She had the passport in order to keep veterinary details up to date and transport the horse, as is normal, however there was certainly no signature on the passport to transfer ownership - she had simply filled in her details online and the HPA sent her a sticker for the passport!

On discovering that the plan was to sell the horse, my partner retrieved the horse on my behalf from the livery yard (with the permission of the yard owner). Apart from causing a fuss, the "loanee" did not call the police or contact a solicitor - indicating that she knew she was in the wrong. However, she refuses to give the passport back, claiming that the horse is hers and we have "stolen" it. She has no other documents or reciepts for the animal (I do), and claims that I had given her the horse rather than loaned it to her.

I have contacted the Horse Passport Agency who will not issue another passport while there is already a valid one in circulation. They have spoken to the loanee, who admits she has the passport but again claims that the horse has been stolen from her. However, despite being asked for a crime number and this not being produced (because she didn't call the police!), they will not take the issue any further. I have also contacted Defra, trading standards and the police but they all say it's not their problem.

I am going round in circles and don't know where to go from here. The HPA has stated that the passport itself actually belongs to them, so I cannot take her to court or involve the police for it myself.

Despite her claims that the horse has been stolen, the "loanee" has made no effort to find the animal, involve the police or even contact me in the past few months, so she is purely being difficult. However, she has taken a lot of malicious routes to cause trouble, including visiting livery yards and telling them that I owe money everywhere (I do not!) so that they won't take me on, and also even calling the RSPCA and reporting the horse as starving (he's far from it!) and telling the RSPCA officer that she would give the horse a home if he took it away from me. Obviously this didn't happen. It seems that she is making every effort to make my life difficult in the hope that I will give up on the horse. However, she will not take the legal route as she knows she has put the passport in her name with no right to do so.

I am very worried as this passport is now in her name, and therefore am worried about transporting the animal and certainly cannot show him as I planned to do. I have tried everything, I just want the passport returned and back in my name as I feel that it is doubtful that I actually own my horse anymore.

Has anyone had any experience of this sort of thing?
 
Not personally.

When she transferred ownership into her own name on the passport in order to pass the horse off as hers she committed a crime of deception and you should report this to the police. Once you have a crime reference and an investigation underway you can update the Horse Passport Agency and ask them to cancel that passport - it may be that the Police will seize hers as evidence anyway and take it out of circulation

You can then get a new passport or another in the interim with the agreement of the HPA
 
I don't think a passport is a document of legal ownership.

I have a passport for my horse, the owner stated is not the girl I bought her off but the person before that.
With having injections I haven't sent it off to be updated.

It certainly doesn't make the other lady the owner of my horse.
 
A passport is not proof of ownership.You have receipts for the horse so can prove it is yours.Your 'friend' knows she is in the wrong ,as like you say she hasn't gone to the police and said her horse has been stolen! .I don't know how you can go about getting the passport back though.
If you look at my horses passports, one is still owned by the MOD and my mare is still owned by mother hen
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I don't think i have updated the pony's passport either and we have had her 4 years.
 
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Not personally.

When she transferred ownership into her own name on the passport in order to pass the horse off as hers she committed a crime of deception and you should report this to the police. Once you have a crime reference and an investigation underway you can update the Horse Passport Agency and ask them to cancel that passport - it may be that the Police will seize hers as evidence anyway and take it out of circulation

You can then get a new passport or another in the interim with the agreement of the HPA

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This was the first thing I did, but the police didn't want to know. They said it was not a criminal matter but a "civil dispute over ownership" instead. The HPA have refused to cancel the passport as she has admitted that she still has it - therefore there is still a valid passport in circulation.

It's a nightmare!
 
quirky - if you own the horse then you can get in trouble as the horse must being your name if you've owned it over 30 days - I bought a horse and sold it within 32 days and I was fined for not putting it in my name - i had left the previous owners name in it.
 
Let's just look at this from another angle for a moment. Are you documenting all these incidents of her visiting the yards etc? Surely we are looking at harrasment and slander? Harrasment is a criminal offence. I would get some legal advice, maybe talk to the CAB first, but don't focus just on the passport, think about the defamation of your character.
How difficult is it to just apply for a passport with another agency while this is going on? Just so you can stay legal.
Sorry, Lochpearl you got into trouble because you sold your horse without a valid passport I think. Maybe someone else can correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Also...I would instruct a solicitor to write her a letter pointing out everything she has done and threatening her with legal action of some sort......she may be a pain in the ass but it seems she actually shies away from the police or the legal route...you may just scare her into action.

It will cost you, obviously- but worth it to my mind.
 
OMG. I cant believe what some people will do, I just cant believe what i read sometimes. How dare she !!!!!!!! (is she the full shilling).
 
The cheek of it! This is getting all too common, loan horses sold on.

A solicitor's letter should do the trick. I had to get one done to get some expensive tack returned to me and the result was instant!

Good luck, glad you got your horse back.
 
This was the first thing I did, but the police didn't want to know. They said it was not a criminal matter but a "civil dispute over ownership" instead. The HPA have refused to cancel the passport as she has admitted that she still has it - therefore there is still a valid passport in circulation

If this was a car that you loaned to a friend, and they reregistered in their own name with a view to selling it the Police would treat it as a crime - a horse is no different. They simply put it into the too difficult catagory and fobbed you off - try again, and as suggested follow up on the harassment angle.
 
I honestly didn't think it would be this much of a horror story.

I thought there had to be a signature on the passport to change ownership, and that the issuing agency would have to see the passport and signature to issue new ownership - a bit like the DVLA when you buy a new car, perhaps?

On finding that she had managed to do it anyway, I then thought they would probably reverse it as I had told them I hadn't signed the passport. But no, it seems not.

I think that this is a horrendous loophole when it comes to loaning. Even if I had had a loan agreement in place, she could still have done this and claimed that I had given her the horse in the end.

Even picking up the horse was difficult. I was informed by the police that if I went down to pick the horse up, I could be arrested for breach of the peace and also theft (as the passport is in her name!). This is why we had to contact the yard owner first, as technically it is up to him who goes on his land and therefore who is "breaching the peace". If it wasn't for this, I may still be without my horse.

I still worry that technically she could come to my yard, remove the horse and there's nothing I can do as the passport is in her name so therefore it wouldn't be classed as theft. It's very stressful, even though I do have him back.
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Not read all the replies, so don't know it this has already been said BUT, as the "previous" owner, you have to sign the passport as a part of the transfer of ownership.
IF she has signed that bit too, then it's fraud and you are quite within your rights to sue and involve the police.
 
As others have said, I think you need to go and speak to a solicitor. You will find that most will give advice for a nominal sum and it is up to you whether you use them to write her a formal letter.
 
Dont suppose there is any way you can do the same and go online to change the ownership back, then contact the agency and say this passport has got lost and get a duplicate issued?
 
Oh how I feel for you. A similar thing happened to me years ago.
I loaned a horse to a so called "Friend" who actually SOLD the horse. I had a basic loan agreement in place but although I tried, spoke to solicitors etc I could do nothing about it except for going through the small claims court, which, at the time I could not afford. This was a long time before passports were introduced.
In hindsight I should have followed it through but we are all wiser with the benefit of hindsight.
This person has since moved well away from my area, but if I ever get the opportunity I will tell anyone who wants to know what a nasty piece of work they are.
Anyway, this is of no help to you I'm afraid except to say if you are a BHS Gol;d memeber then this is just the sort of problem they should be able to help with. (I wasn't at the time of my distress but I certainly am now)
 
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Not read all the replies, so don't know it this has already been said BUT, as the "previous" owner, you have to sign the passport as a part of the transfer of ownership.
IF she has signed that bit too, then it's fraud and you are quite within your rights to sue and involve the police.

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Actually....no you dont.....you can do it online, and you get sent a sticker through the post to put in the passport to register you as new owner.

I have never needed to sign a passport when I have sold a horse.
 
I know this is a bit late, but if you had used the loan agreement on the BHS website there is a clause that says:

It is understood by the BORROWER that at NO TIME is she the registered OWNER of the HORSE and under no circumstances whatsoever is she permitted to Loan, Lease or Sell the HORSE to any third parties.

Also regarding the passport, my horses have the green Irish Horse Register passports, and there is no requirement for the previous owner to sign anything, I just sent them off to the NIHB to change the details when I bought them.
 
QR: there is some kind of either fraud going on here or misadministration on the part of the HPA.

I have a HPA passport, and to change ownership is £12.50 plus they contact the previous owner and give them 30 days to agree to the ownership change. They call this their 'integrity check' and it is discussed on their website: (bold is my addition)

This program allows you to notify us that you have purchased an animal that already has a Horse Passport Agency issued passport. This avoids the need for you to post the passport to us, meaning you have it available for inspection if you are competing or transporting your horse, and avoid the risk of passports getting lost in the post. After we have carried out integrity checks we will post you a receipt label, which you must attach in the passport - this is proof that the horse has been recorded in your ownership.

So someone somewhere in the HPA has dropped the ball OR the loaner has provided false surname details for you as presumably you were never contacted? But the surname details must have matched a horse otherwise HPA could not have contacted you, so are you certain that your details were up to date in the HPA system - if you are then I would be ringing them back, asking to speak to a manager and enquiring as to why the integrity checks were not carried out in this instance.
 
WHAT SORT OF A FRIEND WAS SHE ???? Ive read the answers and people are right in what they are saying , but personally if this happened to me I would go round her house and smack her and keep repeating my actions until she gave it back , what is this world coming too , Id definitely take things into my own hands sometimes its the only way , sorry to sound so violent but its surprising what people do when they are backed into a corner good luck xx
 
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Yes.....it does say that doesnt it?

But when we sold a pony last year NO integrity checks were carried out...we were not contacted to ask if we had sold the pony at all....
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Interesting....I assumed my horse's previous owner was contacted but did not ask! In that case OP, I reckon you should be asking a few more questions of the HPA. Along with writing to H&H letters page.

In all honesty the HPA are bloody useless though, so this does not surprise me. My horse's passport application was sent off with full details of his breeding including stud records (I bought him from the breeder so now have these myself) - the HPA provided him with a passport which says 'unknown' next to sire and dam, and to this day refuse to change it! Bloody ridiculous and completely rubbish of them in the first place I think! They even returned the documents with the passport, idiots!
 
[ QUOTE ]
QR: there is some kind of either fraud going on here or misadministration on the part of the HPA.

I have a HPA passport, and to change ownership is £12.50 plus they contact the previous owner and give them 30 days to agree to the ownership change. They call this their 'integrity check' and it is discussed on their website: (bold is my addition)

This program allows you to notify us that you have purchased an animal that already has a Horse Passport Agency issued passport. This avoids the need for you to post the passport to us, meaning you have it available for inspection if you are competing or transporting your horse, and avoid the risk of passports getting lost in the post. After we have carried out integrity checks we will post you a receipt label, which you must attach in the passport - this is proof that the horse has been recorded in your ownership.

So someone somewhere in the HPA has dropped the ball OR the loaner has provided false surname details for you as presumably you were never contacted? But the surname details must have matched a horse otherwise HPA could not have contacted you, so are you certain that your details were up to date in the HPA system - if you are then I would be ringing them back, asking to speak to a manager and enquiring as to why the integrity checks were not carried out in this instance.

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I have had the horse since a foal (he has just turned two), and so the passport was only ever registered in my name. The details are correct in it.

I was not aware of the above - thank you! However, the loanee had her sticker within two weeks of registering herself as the owner, so they certainly didn't give 30 days. I was certainly not contacted about change of ownership either.

However, I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, as I suppose I now need to prove that I wasn't contacted? I didn't give any consent or sign anything, but obviously didn't disagree at the time either because I didn't know!
 
As has been said--- but seemingly overlooked... she went online, changed the ownership... why cant you do the same??
 
If you are a BHS Gold member then contact their legal line for free advice. If not join the BHS as a Gold Member and and get free legal advice.

Contact a specialist Equine Solicitor and instruct them to advise you on how you can resolve this issue.

Could I also remind everyone that the BHS loan agreament needs to be ammended to your personal circumstances and then checked out by a specialist equine solicitor beforte being signed by the parties concerned.
 
lexie, I read it as the loanee still had the original passport hence OP would have a sticker then but no passport to put it in
 
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