EDP24

Banks 'hound' debt suicide's family

25 June 2005 07:59

The wife of a Norfolk family man who committed suicide because of his £65,000 debts told last night how the big banks were hounding her to repay the cash.

Marion McDonald said finance companies had continued to lend money to her husband Mark as he spiralled deeper and deeper into the red.

Father-of-two Mr McDonald's body was found beside a railway line near their home in Downham Market with a bundle of demands detailing debts of £65,000.

Mr McDonald's debts were in his name alone. But while his creditors are aware of his death, they are now pursuing his wife for the money.

"They are still asking for payments," Mrs McDonald said. We have a little money in my husbands estate, there is the car which will have to be sold, but there is still little left."

Mrs McDonald declined to name the credit cards and finance companies which had loaned her husband the money and said she was now taking legal advice.

"It is a tragedy. This has ripped the family apart as you can imagine, we are just taking each day as it comes," she said.

"It's just to easy now for people to get money. There is nothing to stop them. The credit card companies are turning a blind eye to it.

"There should be some type of form which informs credit card companies that the person is up to their limit and not showing signs of paying it off quickly, to stop them just getting more credit cards it's just not fair."

Mr McDonald 43, had kept his financial worries secret from family and friends - and never showed any sign that he was in trouble.

When police found his body on a railway line police also found a rucksack containing 80 letters from finance firms.

His wife of 15 years had no idea her husband had built up the debts on store cards, a loan and credit cards.

He had remortgaged the family home in 2003 to try to meet repayments and Mrs McDonald, 47, presumed the debts had all been cleared by it.

She believes he must have started to get into trouble when he was working away for British Aerospace in Preston in the late 1990's.

She said: "The payments must have just run away with him, and he was too proud to say anything and the problem just snowballed and over took him.

"He would not have admitted what was happening and the problems become very big, he just saw death as the only way out. He would have felt ashamed and let us down."

Mr McDonald had never shown any signs of his financial struggles and did not spend the money on flashy cars or lavish holidays.

Mrs McDonald said in the future she could do more to campaign to stop the credit cards destroying other families.

She said the money was just too readily available in the post and on the TV adverts.

"They just seem to make it all seem so nice and happy to take out extra money, and it just isn't."

And she hopes by telling her story other's will understand the scale of the problems by taking on too much debt.

An inquest into Mr McDonald's death was held earlier this week. The jury heard that a few days before his death Mrs McDonald received a telephone call at her home from a credit card company asking for her husband.

Mrs McDonald and her husband had separate bank accounts and she left him to open any letters addressed to him.

On the day of his death he shared a car journey with a work colleague to Marshall's Aerospace in Cambridge and his colleague told the inquest Mr McDonald had been laughing and joking. The jury returned a verdict of suicide.