old marital debt-bill collectors
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| Tue, 04-17-2007 - 9:36am |
my D was final almost 4 years ago. about a yr before our D was final my H (at the time) totaled a truck i had signed for. he had not paid the insurance and totaled the truck. he and his GF (OW) walked away from the accident and never looked back. i couldn't afford a D lawyer at the time and filed my d papers and attending the couple hearings before a judge (H never showed up for court). we had no real estate, stocks, etc. I had a car we financed together that i kept in the D and continued to make all the payments on time.
fast forward 4 yrs. last week i get a call from a collections company out of the blue, haven't heard from anyone about this truck since the end of 2002. i've endured it on my credit and was counting the years till it fell off. i haven't had much dealings with collection agencies so i'm not sure if what they are saying is just to scare me.
they are tellign me i can take a 35% settlement and pay off the truck for $4700
OR start making payment s again on the $13,000 still owed on the truck OR they will take me to court and file a final judgement on my credit. they tell me this is worse than a bankruptcy on your credit and will include the $13,000 plus lawyer fees, court cost, etc.
when i spoke to the collections company last week i explained the situation to them, gave them XH phone # and they called XH. converstation was not nice and X has no plans of paying this bill. they will be putting this final judgement on X's credit as well but he has nothing, no car, no license, no house, no job, it's not a big deal to him.
any advise? can a collection company come back 4 yrs later and demand payment? any have a final judgement filed against them? any bill collectors out there?
i'm looking for advice here on what to do. my parents say to try to pay it off, they may even offer to loan me the money to pay it off. X's mother tells me to not answer the phone or front door and they will not be able to take me to court of file a judgement against us. wonder where her son gets his values from?
thanks in advance.

sara
money problems stink. i would consult an attorney. i just filed bankruptcy, it killed me, but it was the only way to get relief from my stbx.
i am not suggesting that you file bankruptcy, but you may want to research you options, (possibly suing x in small claims court)
what
I had a somewhat similar situation. Ex illegally sub-leased a car that was in my name, which ended up trashed, which ended up with a HUGE bill at the end of the lease. He refused to pay it, so it was going to go on my credit. I ended up hiring a collections type of attorney who negotiated with the company I owed money to and he negotiated a much smaller settlement than the original amount. You might consider the same thing and try to get what you pay down even lower than $4700.
Then we sued my ex-husband in small claims court. I had a lawyer, he didn't, he tried to bully me, but when he saw I had a lawyer, he bailed, so I got default judgement against him. That was TWO years ago and he hasn't paid a dime of the judgement.
I can go after him and garnish his wages, but I'm not exactly sure who he's working for. There are 2 states that won't garnish wages for small claims court judgements and TX is one of them and that's where I live, so for awhile, I had to wait for him to move back to OK (where his parents live). He's living there now, but commuting to some job in AR, so I really need to wait until he's working somewhere I can actually verify and then I plan on garnishing his wages.
HOWEVER, you ex sounds like a real winner and I suspect that he will ignore the entire thing. Not pay a dime even with a judgement against him. No job means nothing to garnish. There are some other options (can't remember the legal name) which entail taking anything he has of value, selling it off, and putting it towards the debt, but again, he has to have something of value.
You are basically stuck b/t a rock and a hard place. I would do what you can to get it paid off as cheaply as possible and then just be patient. If your parents are willing to help out, take them up on it. My judgement against my ex is good for 10 years and can be renewed easily as often as necessary. I plan to just bide my time and wait... I will eventually get my money, but it may not be until my 2 year old son is ready to enter college... ;)
Oh, and your ex's mom is wrong when she says you can just ignore this and they can't get judgement against you. That is VERY, VERY wrong. it's harder, but still possible...
Unfortunately, sometimes it does take that long for this kind of thing to catch up to you.
Karen ~ wildlucky4me ~
I agree that you should talk to an attorney. However, a marital debt is owed by both parties regardless of what the CO for the divorce says. You may want to contact a consumer credit agency, one that is non-profit only, to get their two cents on how to take care of it. They are often able to work out a better deal or at least better payments on a debt. They MAY be able to talk to collection agency into collecting half of settlement from you with a document from them stating that you don't owe any more on it. (I was able to do this with some marital debts that were at collections after my D.) Then they can go after him for the other half of the settlement or the balance of the bill.
This is the agency I went through was "Consumer Credit Counseling." There are different websites for different areas throughout the US. I would put "Consumer Credit Counseling + (city, state)" into Google to get the one in your area.