Question:	QUESTION: Hello Bill. I received a letter from an arbitration company telling me that a civil lawsuit from Discover card is on its way regarding some credit card debt. We don't deny the debt and paid our bills until we ran out of money. My husband and I have been unemployed for a few months now but we are actively looking for work. The only asset we have is some computer equipment and a car we are still paying (in other words, it still belongs to the lender.) We have a couple hundred dollars in the bank which we are using for food. Our situation is desperate and we have told the collection agents so but to no avail. I guess they have heard similar stories so many times from so many people. The company sending the letter even mentions the civil suit by number so I will go to the courthouse tomorrow to learn how far along the civil suit is. I read your comments posted on your website and most likely, in civil court, Discover card will win because we don't (and never have) denied the debt. My question is: If I don't have a job and virtually no assets, what will happen after the judgement is entered against me? Your response is welcome and greatly appreciated. MAR :( ANSWER: What arbitration company did they use? NAF? It isn't because you have never denied the debt that they will win. And you want to know what will happen after the judgment is entered against you? Next they will probably go for an assets hearing and force you to go in to court and tell them where you bank, where you work and all about your assets, income and the like. They can and probably will grab any money you have in your bank account and you will go to the store one day to buy groceries and you won't have any money in your bank account to pay for them. Count on that and keep your bank account drained down to nothing or next to it. Then one day you will get a job and find out that your check has been garnished too. And just what do you mean by "virtually" no assets? Now then, since you have already assumed that you probably can't win in local court then maybe you would do well to learn how to beat up on them in federal court. But on the other hand, don't forget to tell me what arbitration company they used because that can be the key to keeping them from getting a judgment in the first place. I wouldn't give up on winning in local court just yet. Maybe all isn't lost just yet. image: Collections-Law-912/2009/08/click-enlarge_313.gif ---------- FOLLOW-UP ---------- QUESTION: Hello Bill, Thank you for reply. I'm grateful for the information you provided. It helps a lot. I was afraid but thanks to you I am learning about this process which is new to us. WHAT ARBITRATION COMPANY DID THEY USE? The arbitration company turned out to be a scavenger agency trying to "help us reduce the debt" for a fee. I went to the courthouse to check if the case was active and learned there is a hearing later this month. WHAT DO I MEAN BY VIRTUALLY NO ASSETS? We don't own a home nor do we have a mortgage. We are paying a car which is our only means of transportation. We incurred the Discover card debt to buy a printer, a computer, and some computer accessories so my husband could start a business. We have been unemployed for a few months now. The money we had saved was used to pay bills until the money ran out. I assumed we could not win in local court because I read all the answers you provided in your website. Specifically that 94% of the cases brought to court are won by the credit card companies because the judge only cares if the debt is valid. While at the courthouse I went into the court room and spend a few hours listening to the cases presented that day and all the cases before the judge went very rapidly. Of the 30 cases before the judge that day all 30 were won by Chase and Capital One. The only case that required postponment was a man who filed for bankruptcy. It seems the only solution available is to file for bankruptcy. We don't have the funds to pay a lawyer for bankruptcy nor are we well versed in legal proceedings. Denying the debt will only delay the inevitable. This is the reason why I decided to contact you. You seem to know a lot about the law. Any information you could provide will be greatly appreciated.
Answer:	I'd advise you to start learning by checking out some of my comments at which is a links page leading to many other docs pages which I and others have written. There is a great deal of information in those links that will be helpful to you. I'd like to get a look at the papers you get from the courthouse. You can scan them into image files and send them to me at ceo@creditwrench.com or you can also copy them then redact all the personal information then scan them and upload them to your own Google Docs page and either email me the links or post the links here. It is not necessary to file bankruptcy at all. Doing so is very expensive, time consuming and the results are usually pretty devastating in many ways. The only way it is worthwhile is if you have a huge amount of debt and a great deal of assets which are still insufficient to pay off all that you owe. I'd say that if you owe less then $50,000 it probably won't be worth filing BK. I wouldn't worry much about smaller debt because you can easily make those and resulting judgments go away by catching them breaking the law and filing one or more federal lawsuits against them for those violations. That's what I teach people how to do as well as how to do battle with them in local courts. Fighting in local courts is well worthwhile even if you end up losing which, as I predict, is probably inevitable. That is because they always violate federal law giving you grounds to take them to federal court and make it all go away. It really isn't all that hard to do. Just takes a bit of time and effort and you will learn very quickly how to win even though you might lose at local court. Again, I'd like to get a look at the court paperwork because the statement you made about some outfit ostensibly trying to help you and now filing a lawsuit against you is intriguing to say the least.

Labels: Arbitration, Bankruptcy, Business, Credit card, Google Docs, Law, Lawsuit, National Arbitration Forum

Questioner: Jean
Category: Collections Law
Private: No

Subject: collections lawsuit
Question: QUESTION: I am being sued for a credit card debt and need to file a response to the court to buy time, but don't have much time to respond. I am considering bankruptcy so this is probably the first of many, but need to gather my money to hire an attorney. What do I need to say to the court in a response letter. If I am willing to settle for like $25/month, should I say this here. Do you have a form letter I can send to the court nad attorney to buy me some time? the debt is mine, amongst others and I am in this mess due to the loss of equity on my home and I am unable to make these payments with everything else going on. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

ANSWER: You should use creditwrench on them instead of bankruptcy because creditwrench does exactly the same thing for a lot less money and does it much more effectively. It also does it without leaving a mark on your credit reports and on top of that you get paid instead of paying out all that money for nothing. Bankruptcy don't necessarily make them go away but creditwrench does just that.

So why file bankruptcy?

One does not send letters to the court to respond to a summons. What one does is prepare a defense in the proper format so that it looks like it was prepared by a professional attorney instead of just a letter.

What do you say? You might want to prepare a graduated denial in response to the summons and then follow that up with interrogatories, admissions and demand for production of documents.

Learn how to win the collections game instead of being the loser.

Bill Bauer
495-684-9297

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I was served for this lawsuit for a claim of $5K and it says I must respond within 20 days, so I assume I have to send them something now. Do you have an example of a graduated denial letter that I could send.

Tell me more about creditwrench and if it is really an option. I have ~$50K in credit card debt, a high mortgage and car payment with nothing left to pay that credit card debt. My only option I thought would be bankruptcy or lose everything and be paying a ton in legal fees...

Answer: Creditwrench teaches people what their rights are under the law and how to actually make the debt collectors and their attorneys obey the law or pay the consequences of their without having to hire an attorney to defend them or their rights.

How we do that depends on where you are in the debt collection process.
We sometimes get people who have not even defaulted on their obligations but due to a change in their incomes or health or other problems in their life they know they are soon going to be unable to meet the obligations they once thought they could meet easily. Nobody wants to be a deadbeat and skip out on the obligations they lawfully owe but when things go bad due to circumstances beyond their control they have to do something to save what they have.

Others come to us because of mortgage foreclosure problems. Those who come to creditwrench early are especially lucky because they have the opportunity to learn how to deal with abusive debt collectors early on.

Then at the other end of the spectrum we have people who contact us a few days before they have to go to court to answer a summons and complaint. They lost many of their opportunities to learn how to win in court and have to deal with their situation and sometimes within a matter of hours.

Your situation is similar to that above. You have only a few days before you have to respond to a summons and complaint and you not only have no idea of how to go about it but you also have no idea of how much paperwork it is going to take to put up a viable defense.

Here is what you need just for starters to put up a viable defense. First of all you have to learn how to properly prepare court documents for filing. Then you have to prepare and present a response to the summons and complaint that the court will hopefully listen to. And you are going to have to send a copy of your response to the plaintiff's attorney by certified mail and it has to be accompanied by a document known as a certificate of mailing.

I had a new student this morning who had two days left within which to
file his response or get a default judgment against him. We started teaching him how to do that last evening and by this morning he was ready to go file his response. Total time he spent doing that was about 2 hours. Tomorrow we will work on his interrogatories, admissions and demand for the production of documents which he will also send to the plaintiff's attorney by certified mail, return receipt requested and a certificate of mailing will also go along with that. He already knows how to prepare those, of course and it won't take him more than about 10 minutes to prepare each new one he needs in the future without help.

Then we will start to work on other possible motions to file with the court and he will also have to learn how to file a federal lawsuit against the plaintiff's attorney for violation of federal law. That can take much more time and how much time will largely depend on how much time he has to devote to it according to his other obligations such as his job and his family.

Students need much, much more help and coaching than they ever realize when they start out and there is no limit to how much personal coaching they can get from me.

They learn so much in a few weeks that they are probably better prepared to fight their own battles than most attorneys will ever be.
They will learn that when they take the attorneys and collection agencies to federal court they will be able to force the plaintiff in the local court to forget about the local case and dismiss it or if a judgment has been rendered they will have to get it vacated and removed from the student's record or pay a heavy price in federal court for failing or refusing to do so. They will usually be far more willing to do that than to have to face a federal judge and jury and explain why they broke the law. I've never ran into any who were foolish enough to try that yet.

I do hope that helps you to understand how it can be that creditwrench
gets the same job done as bankruptcy does yet leaves no public or credit bureau records to haunt them for years to come.

Labels: Business, Collection agency, Credit card debt, Credit history, Debt Consolidation, Financial Planning, Financial Services, Foreclosure