AboutCreditwrench 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.
Question QUESTION: My husband and I owned a business that closed in 2004 and we had a balance on a capital one business credit card of 5,000. We did not sell the business, we lost it and nearly had to file bankruptcy. Now we have an arbitration hearing set . When I rec'd the notice I called the company immediately and tried to work out a payment plan ,they said they would hold off judgement so I have been sending something monthly even though my husband and I are out of work...The new balance is 12,000 now they said there is no way we can settle at this rate and they are going forward with a default judgement. What does this mean? Is my husband responsible personally even though our business was an S corp? Any ideas or recommendations would be helpful..Can they put a lien on our home? How does statue of limitations work?
Thanks so much for your help.
ANSWER: Ok. So now they have set an arbitration hearing set which you will lose almost no matter what you do or say. The reason they are taking it to arbitration is most likely that they know it is outside the statute of limitations but also know they can go around that by getting an arbitration award which is about as hard for them to do as falling off a log. You have only one way to defend and that is to go on the offensive now before it is too late. Once they have an arbitration award is granted their next step will be to hire a local attorney to reduce it to a judgment which will also be automatically granted. The only way you can go on the offensive is to file a federal lawsuit against them. You can do so without ever having to actually go to court or ever see the inside of a federal courtroom or a judge. It can all be done by U.S. Mail, over the internet or by telephone. That is the normal way such federal cases are handled. If you don't do that they can end up seizing bank accounts, putting liens on your home, garnishing wages, seizing vehicles and selling them to get money and even so far as to send a sheriff to your home to grab anything of value they can find there to sell to pay off what you owe. Now then, I'm not trying to frighten you, I'm not telling you that they will do all those things, I'm just telling you that those are things they can do. What they can or cannot do is controlled by the laws of your state and by the federal laws governing garnishment. It is easy to find those laws on the internet and they are easy to understand. What I do is teach people how to win in court without lawyers and keep all those bad things from happening to them.
QUESTION: Thanks for your answer, but I am confused what would we be filing a federal lawsuit against them for exactly? and what does this sort of thing cost and why didn't our attorney mention this to us before? What exactly will filing this do for us at this point? We are still trying some way to scrap the money together to try and settle this some way but time is running out.
Answer You can file against them for any violations of FDCPA that they might have committed. For instance did you send the lawyer a demand for validation? If not, why not? If so, have they given you a full and complete accounting of the debt and amount claimed before proceeding with the arbitration? There are many ways they can and always do violate. You can sue them for any and all violations. And why didn't your attorney mention this to you? Because there are very few attorneys who want to take FDCPA cases even if they do understand that part of the law. And even if they do understand it they still don't want to file against another attorney and that is who you would have to file your case against. But why would anyone want to hire an attorney who obviously won't protect his client's rights? That is what you hired him for so obviously he isn't doing what you are paying him to do. Time isn't running out. You have a year from the date they violated to file the case against them. You are scraping up the money to pay them? Why not scrape up the money to file your federal case against them and make them pay you instead? The federal filing fee is only $350.00 and they will have to pay that back to you in the settlement as well as forget about arbitration and ever collecting a dime from you. You already have a cause of action because they are attempting to collect a debt that is outside the statute of limitations and therefore legally noncollectable. Their arbitration is nothing more or less than a ruse to defeat the law and your rights under the law. Of course, if you won't stand up for your rights under the law then there is no hope for you or thousands of other Americans facing the same situation as you are.
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