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 Hello, I`m in Oklahoma. I understand social security benefits are exempt from a debt collector attempting to garnish or a bank freezing bank assets. I am in the process of helping my Mother file the Exempt Income Protection paperwork to her bank in case they overlook her direct deposited Social Security check regarding a debt collector attempting to collect for a past debt. What I`m curious about, I`ve read somewhere they can only freeze an amount over $1700 in a bank account. Does that mean if she does not have the exempted income paperwork filed yet and she has less than $1700 in her bank account, they will not touch any of her money even if they get a judgement? It hasn`t gone to court and hoping they don`t go that far.
Thank you!
As you probably know, I'm in Oklahoma too. OKC. Where did you come up with the idea of the Exempt income protection stuff? That isn't going to do your mother any good. It will prove to be nothing but a waste of time and money. The real truth is that so long as money is in a bank it can be garnished even though federal law says it is exempt. The reason that is so is because the law which says it can't be garnished has no teeth. There are no penalties for violating it. Although there are no penalties for violating that law, there are remedies. So if your mother's SSI check is garnished she can sue in federal court for violation of FDCPA. So one law makes garnishment of pension funds illegal it takes another to enforce it but the pensioner must take his own legal action because no governmental agency will do so that I know of. Furthermore, they can get a judgment and then force her into an assets hearing and force her to bring her bank records into court so they can review them to see if there have been any funds other than SSI deposited into the account. If so, then they can go after the whole thing. If a family member gave your mother some money for whatever purpose, even for her birthday or a christmas present they can the use that as an excuse to grab all of her money. So she must be very careful not to deposit any money whatever into that account. Savings accounts can be grabbed too. So if they freeze her money she can be in very bad shape until she can go after them in federal court and that can take a long time. Up to a year or more. In the meantime, she can be in real hardship. The way to prevent all that misery is to learn about FDCPA and FCRA and how to sue them in federal court before they ever get that far. Stop it before it happens. Catching a debt collector breaking the law is easy to do and learning how to sue them in federal court and win without lawyers isn't hard either. So I'd say that if you want to help her then you need to get started learning how to do things the right way instead of messing with theories that sound good but aren't worth the time and effort to try to make them work.
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