You received a notice from your debt collection agent telling you that you owe them money. They have called you repeatedly, demanding payment. Are you still unsure about what you must do next? You probably are not aware that debt collectors can legally attach your property to exact the full amount owed on your account. What do you do now? You might think that you are in big trouble, but there are options. Learn more about the debt collector’s legal rights and your rights by following the guidelines in this article.
Before contacting your credit recovery services, you first need to review the laws governing debt collectors in your state. These laws generally make it illegal for debt collectors to threaten you, or in some cases, actually threaten to report you to debt collectors if you don’t pay your debts. Additionally, some states make it illegal for debt collectors to threaten you with registering your bankruptcy to your credit rating agency if you don’t pay your bills. These laws generally apply to written threats, so you may receive a phone call threatening you to call the collection agency or send you documents regarding your debts unless you pay them.
If the debt collector has already begun to contact you about your bills, you may be able to stop the calls yourself. All collection agencies must obtain a signed trust deed or power of sale from a named third party. Once obtained, the debt collector must notify you of the name, address, and phone number of the person or entity that they will use to repay the debts. You can stop any further calls by simply informing the debt collector that you are aware that they are contacting you in this way and that you don’t want to continue to do business with them. The debt collector is legally obligated to stop contacting you under these circumstances.
If you decide to work with credit recovery services instead of working with a debt management company, you may still owe a certain amount of money to your accounts. However, you can generally expect to pay credit card debt collectors approximately half the amount they are currently asking for. This is because the debt collection agencies don’t contact individual creditors but instead work with the major credit card companies to just pass along your account information to the debt management agency. With debt management plans, you typically get monthly statements from the creditors, and if you can’t afford to make payments, you may be forced to liquidate your accounts.
