What do you do when you are unable to settle with an attorney threatening Judgment for CC debt?
I have an attorney who has been negotiating with another attorney who is attempting to get a judgment against me for CC debt originally in the amount of ,300. I had been served but do not yet have a court date. The judgment paperwork states the judgment at ,000. We have been negotiating for several months, I have offered a lump sum payment of K, which was refused and they asked for K. Payments on k with K down and 0/month (which is all that I can afford), they came back with .1K and 0 a month and 00 down. I just don’t have the cash to do this. It seems they are asking for an exorbitant amount. I’ve worked with many other creditors and they have settled, usually for less than the actual debt, but this guy is being a real knucklehead. At this point I either have to come up with the .5K or take my chances in court. Any suggestions? I’d like to settle this, but I think they are asking way too much. Just FYI…I ended up at this point because I broke my back 5 years ago and became disabled and ended up loosing my house, car and not paying many of my CCs. I’ve been trying to settle most of my past debts
Hey, you ran up $6,300 in debt, became delinquent on that, ran it up to $15,000 with late fees and interest charges. You legitimately owe this much. Anything less than that is a deal. Fight it if you wish. If so, they will sue you, probably win, get a judgment against you and then start raiding your bank accounts and garnishing your wages. You say you can’t afford these payments, but what you couldn’t afford was whatever you bought when you ran up these charges. The knucklehead here is the person who ran up the debt, not the one forcing you to pay what you owe.
July 17th, 2010 at 7:25 pmhttp://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/debt/20031107a1.asp
Read this article it has some valuable information towards the end.
One word of advise… liquidate all of your bank accounts.
July 17th, 2010 at 7:25 pmIf they get their judgement they can and will go after your bank accounts first and behind your back will clean out both checking and savings accounts with no prior notice.
Your lawyer should counteroffer much more aggressively. Two alternatives: stick with the $7k at 1k down + $150/mo as the absolute max ("that’s all there is & there is no more"), or insist the financial situation has deteriorated and back up to $5k with $1k down + $100/mo. The mistake was the initial offer of $5k lump sum, which was too much, so they are after the $5k up front plus monthly payments.
Since you are disabled, they are unlikely to get a $15k judgment, and if they did, you would declare bankruptcy and they would get diddly. Your attorney should be going for their jugular for their refusal to negotiate a settlement in good faith. A $5k settlement on $6k debt from a disabled person is very, very generous and should have been snapped up instantly instead of dragging out your (and their!) legal bills.
July 17th, 2010 at 7:25 pm