I have a friend who thinks he is about to get sued for a credit card he did not pay. He tried to get the credit card company to settle for an amount he could pay but to no avail. The sate he lives in will not allow a creditor to garnish wages, and he does not have any assets that exceed the state exemptions.
I have a couple questions…wonder what type of steps he can take to make this more difficult for the creditor and therefore more likely to settle. I’m guessing that a debt case like that is pretty straightforward, but are there any delaying steps he can take (motions to dismiss, etc) that will frustrate the plaintiff? Legal fees are not really a concern because there is a state cap of 15% in legal fees the plantiff can get anyway.
Would it also be of any advantage to avoid being served as long as possible?
It depends on a few things, among them being the amount of the debt and how old it is.
My experience solely involves my ex declaring bankruptcy, AFTER I had paid my half of the indebtedness after the divorce, but BEFORE he moved the joint remainder of the debt into a single account. It was on two cards, relatively small ($3,000-ish) amounts, each.
An attorney I consulted said that generally speaking, credit card companies will not pursue collection if the amount is “small.” I believe this depends on the credit card company, and presumably the state, though I don’t know that.
I highly recommend your friend consult an attorney. The firm I work for will very often give a free one-hour consult. Start at lawyers.com. I wish your friend luck. It can be demoralizing.
Is there some reason you’re not asking these questions of a lawyer?
Many states have organizations that will work on behalf of your friend for free. And where that’s unavailable, you usually can find someone to at least answer your basic questions for free (as mentioned above). Where are you?
Well he lives in NC. I think he filed bankruptcy like 5 years ago so I know that is not an option. He probably can’t afford an attorney since he can’t pay the bill, he owes around $3000. I like doing legal research so I figured I would look into it for him, I don’t really know much about what free options he might have.
Again, lawyers.com. There will be a little symbol thingy that says which firms will do free one-hour initial consults. My firm does it. Take advantage of it. Other than that, try your state bar association. There IS free assistance out there, and attorneys don’t offer it if they aren’t willing to do it (trust me).
Filing motions and such for the express purpose of forcing a settlement or making the adverse party’s life difficult is frowned upon by the court, and, by “frowned upon,” I mean “likely to result in sanctions.”
Of course, I say this at the same time I say that I am not your lawyer and I am not A lawyer, so you should probably **talk to a lawyer **rather than a bunch of yahoos on a message board.
What a concept! I wonder if he thought of that rather than filing bankruptcy to dismiss bad debts and immediately charging up some more that he doesn’t want to pay.
How about making some payments? I hear credit card companies like those.
A credit card company who is refusing to settle? This sounds a little bit fishy - most companies will happily accept payments in installments or for a reduced quantity just to save themselves the hassle of legal measures (not to mention the costs). Things might be different south of the border, but it’s not unusual here to see a creditor offer a 60/40 arrangement where they will write off 40% of the outstanding debt in you agree to pay 60% of the balance immediately.
How little could your friend afford to pay, exactly? And how in the heck did they even manage to get a card with a bankruptcy sitting on their credit record?
Once they’re done with a lawyer, I’d seriously recommend talking to a debt counsellor about their track record so they can make some changes to their spending habits.
Is the credit card company going to sue him, or a collection agency? How does he know he is going to be sued? Is it something like a threat in a letter? I can’t imagine a suit by an agency or a credit card company is going to cost them less than $3,000.
I knew someone who does that kind of work and I had another matter in the court where those are usually heard and I was amazed at how those attorneys do them. They schedule at least fifteen of them to be heard that day. 9 times out of 10, the defendant doesn’t show and they get a default judgment. The pleadings are forms for the most part with some things filled in by a paralegal.
Same in NYC. Here, people frequently don’t receive their summons either because it hasn’t actually been sent, or been sent to the wrong address, or sent to a community address and they never receive it. So about half the cases the non-profits work on are just challenging default judgment for people that never knew they were being sued in the first place–and the only reason they know they lost the default judgment is because their wages suddenly drop or their bank accounts are suddenly frozen.
