Credit Card Debt Lawyer in Peachtree City

Even though you may have been delinquent on payments, many of the threats made by collection agencies are empty ones. For example, a collector may say that you are being marked down for “refusal to pay,” but this phrase is meaningless since you have already “refused” to pay by the time your case has been sent to a collection agency. Collectors may also threaten you with lawsuits or seizure of property. In many cases, such threats may be unenforceable or even illegal.

Another tactic used by collection agencies is to set supposed deadlines. When they give you a decreased settlement amount, they will probably tell you that this deal is only available for a very short time so that you feel pressured to pay immediately. As a matter of fact, settlement offers are only likely to improve over a period of months as the collection agency tries to salvage some portion of what you owe.

Debtors’ Rights

You should be aware of the rights guaranteed to you by The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, including:

• Once you tell a debt collector to stop bothering you at work, possibly jeopardizing your employment, that agent is legally required to stop calling you at your place of employment.
• Debt collectors are not permitted to discuss your debt with third parties, unless the third parties are co-signers, spouses, or attorneys you have hired. They are only allowed to contact neighbors or relatives in order to find you if you have been difficult to locate, never to discuss your personal finances.
• Collectors are not allowed to leave messages on answering machines that are public in nature. If you receive any such messages, you should save them as evidence that your privacy has been invaded.
• There is a 6-year statute of limitations on debt collection in Georgia, though you should remember that collection agencies are not currently obligated to tell you that your debt is “stale” and cannot any longer be considered legally binding.
• Typically, unless you have been sued, creditors cannot seize your property, go after your savings, seize any of your property, or garnish your wages. Unless they are actually preparing to sue you, they cannot legally threaten you with a lawsuit.

In a surprisingly high number of cases, senior citizens are confronted with an old debt that they don’t remember and may not even be responsible for. Such debts may be medical debts that should have been paid by insurance companies, or even debts that the targeted “debtors” never incurred. You should know that making a payment on a stale debt can reawaken its status and lead to your being pursued for subsequent payments. Because supposed debts can also be the result of identity theft, it is crucial to make sure that a debt is really yours and is entirely legitimate before taking responsibility for it. Plenty of people have been scammed into making payments on entirely fake debts.