Stop Bill Collectors!

This post should probably be (more accurately) called How to Stop Bill Collectors From Seizing Your Car, Your House, and your Personal Belongings. If they win a judgment against you, they will take your stuff. They will get a nice police office to come to your house and empty it of your belongings, and there won’t be a thing you can do about it.

You’re behind on your bills, the credit card companies and debt collection agencies are calling, and you’re at your wits end, worrying about when the court will order you to sell your car or garage sale off your furniture and clothing. You’ll only be allowed to keep your state exemptions. See this article on bankruptcy state exemptions for what you’ll be allowed to keep, and what the bill collectors will take.

It’s impossible for me to say for sure whether a credit collection agency will sue you. They might threaten to take you to court, but a lot of the time it’s just lip service.

Creditors are less likely to sue under these conditions

1. You make voluntary payments, even small ones (one of my friends pays $10 a month toward a $100,000 hospital bill).
2. You dispute the debt and come up with a reasonable defense
3. You owe less than $1000
4. You live more than two hours away from the creditor or credit collection agency
5. The creditor doesn’t generally sue people

On the other hand, some creditors are irrational, and will will sue for pitiful amounts of money. There are several situations where the bill collectors are more likely to sue you. If any apply to you, it’s not going to be enough to stop collectors from calling: you’ll need to take evasive action.

Reasons why you are more likely to get sued

• The closer you live to a bill collector, the more likely they are to sue you in court and obtain a judgment.
• You owe an amount of money more than it would cost them to sue you (usually around the $1,000 mark).
• You haven’t paid anything on your debt. If a creditor thinks you might pay…even a little, they probably won’t bother with legal action.
• You are dealing with your original creditor. JCPenney, Sears, and Littletown Credit Union won’t sure you. But GC Services and other shady collections agencies will.

In other words, if you owe a collections agency in California a thousand bucks, and you’re an hour’s drive away, they will sue you in bulk. One of their lowest ranking lawyer’s will be assigned to take a group of potential judgments (including yours) to the local courthouse. One way to avoid this is to find out where the collection agencies are located, then move. You don’t have to physically move: you just have to make them think you’ve moved. I wrote a whole article about tricking collection agencies into thinking you live somewhere else, you can find it by clicking on the link.

Related posts:

1. Debt Collector Harrassment: Craig Cunningham’s Secret Weapon
2. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act FDCPA in Plain English
3. Surprising Fact Debt Collectors Won’t Tell You: Your Debt Expires!
4. The Easy Way to Sue Your Bill Collectors For Harrassment…and Win!
5. Cease and Desist Letter: Vital Information Often Overlooked by Debtors

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 12:17 pm and is filed under Debt Collection Law, General Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.