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Expert: Creditwrench - 11/20/2008


Question
I've received a summons and am being sued by Citibank for a credit card I haven't paid on in 5 months. I've lost my job and my fiance and I are no longer together, so I'm scraping by, paying my mortgage and other bills with my unemployment income. I'm rather confused as to what I should do. Any less income would have devastating effects.

Answer

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You need to respond to the complaint. You need to take immediate steps to protect your assets and your paycheck. You have to assume that no matter what you do you will lose that local court case. You have to assume that no matter what you do they will garnish up to 25% of your wages after you lose. You have to assume that they will also garnish any money you have in bank accounts. Once you understand that you probably have at least a 99% chance of losing in local court then maybe you will be willing to do whatever it takes to stop that from happening. You can do that if you are willing to put a little time and money into learning how to turn the tables on them, keep them from taking your wages or your money out of the bank and make them pay you to go away and leave them alone.

Yes, I can understand that all of that seems too good to be true and of course there is the old saw that says that if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. But in this type of situation the government has made it possible to do just that and it can be done without ever having to hire a lawyer to help you do it.

The law that does that is known as the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act which makes it illegal for 3rd party debt collectors to do certain things and even defines lawyers as 3rd party debt collectors. It even applies to debt collectors and lawyers after they get a judgment and are trying to garnish your goodies.

It also makes you, the consumer a private attorney general with the right to sue debt collectors in any court of law. The problem is that local courts just don't want to play by that law. They don't understand it since their job is to help collect the debt. That means that you have to take the debt collectors to federal court to get the job done. It's not all that hard to do and once you learn how you will know how to do it for the rest of your life.

And although you don't have time to do so because you have a limited time to respond to that complaint, people can learn for free if they get started before they get hit with a summons.

Creditwrench

Expertise

Debt Collections law, Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), federal law, how to properly answer court summons for collection cases, how to prepare federal cases against debt collectors, how to deal with debt collection phone calls.

Experience

I've been an active consumer advocate for more than 40 years and have helped hundreds of people win cases against debt collectors as well as helping them defeat demands for summary judgment lodged against them by banks, debt collectors and defeat mortgage foreclosures and keep their homes.

Education/Credentials
Paralegal courses for the most part.
I have been teaching people how to deal with judgments, mortgage foreclosures and other such problems both on and off the internet for many, many years. I am a Richard Cornforth information provider ever since 2000 and worked with many other organizations and causes since 1980. I was Oklahoma State Chairman for the nationwide drive to defeat the Constitutional Convention which was proposed by various factions within our federal government such as the Council of State Governments and the National Organization of State Governors who were working hard to organize a Constitutional Convention to be held in 1995 for the purpose of rewriting our American Constitution to be more acceptable to the United Nations. I worked with Senator Charles Duke of Colorado and Senator Don Rogers of California and many others across the nation to keep them from getting the number of delegate states required to lawfully hold a Con-Con and we were successful. I have worked with many other legislative issues in Oklahoma and have always been very successful.

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