united-kingdom fraud rent
Guarantor liability and e-signatures (UK)
<p>I am based in the UK and have a tenant in a property that is not paying their rent. The tenancy agreement was signed in Oct 2020 and there are rent arrears for the last few months.</p>
<p>I have a guarantor agreement signed with the tenant's dad acting as the guarantor where he is liable to pay any unpaid rent.</p>
<p>The tenancy agreement and the guarantor agreement were both signed using a popular online esignature platform, which as far as I have researched, is a perfectly legal and acceptable way to sign a contract.</p>
<p>The guarantor has confirmed the email address to which the guarantor agreement was emailed is his own, personal account.</p>
<p>However, the guarantor is claiming the tenant (his son) has access to his email address and signed the guarantor agreement fraudulently - presumably without his knowledge.</p>
<p>It might be useful to know the guarantor has claimed the son has also fraudulently set up other forms of credit (e.g. payday loans) this way and the guarantor has allegedly filed a report with the police. It is unclear if the tenant still has access to the guarantor's email account.</p>
<p>In this scenario, is the guarantor still liable to pay the unpaid rent arrears? If he successfully claims the documents were signed fraudulently, can he still be liable by means or being complicit or aware of his son's activity, not least by (presumably) seeing the emails coming through after signature over the last 10 months?</p>
<p>Any comments are appreciated</p>

<h2>If the purported guarantor can prove the facts stated then they are not a guarantor</h2>
<p>You can rely on the signature and the onus of proving it isn’t theirs on the balance of probabilities rests on the guarantor. However, if they can do that, then they never agreed to be guarantor and you’re out of luck.</p>
