Over two years ago, I had a vehicle repossesed by Credit Acceptace Corp, and now have a deficiency of between $5,900 and $7,000 depending on wht credit report I look at. It's also showing the date of last activity as last month, even though there has been no activity on the account since the repossesion in May of 2012.
The circumstances leading up to the repo were my wife filed for divorce, and in a fit of brilliance, her attorney convinced her to also file for a temporary restraining order against me to strengthen the divorce case against me. Part of the temporary restraining order was that I had nothing to do with the vehicle, which was in my name only because I provided the only income in the household.
Because of this, I couldn't legally pay the payment without violating the restraining order. Her father and lawyer convinced her to not pay the loan since it wasn't under her name, and even told Credit Acceptance when they called that we weren't paying, and to just come and take the car, which they did approximately a week after the payment first became late.
Because of the restraining order, I never received any correspondence from Credit Acceptance, I'm assuming that it all went to my home that I couldn't go to and my wife.
After the repossession, the entire temporary restraining order was thrown out with prejudice as being without cause.
Now, I'm trying to clean up my credit, and this is the only major derogatory remark left on my credit report.
What's my best option to get this cleaned up? I don't have money to just pay the entire balance, but I can make some payments. I don't want to make payments and restart the date of last activity, athough my credit report is showing the last activity was last month. I also haven't heard from them at all since this, they've made no attempt to collect the debt as fr as I know. It hasn't been assigned to a credit agency that I know of, it's still being reported by them. I'm also afraid that if I contact them to try and work something out, I'll draw attention to it and open myself up to a potential lawsuit.
My options that I see are:
- Keep not paying, and hope that they don't try to collect in the next few years and just take the hit to my credit score
- Contact them and try to work out a payment plan
- Contact them and try to validate the debt - I don't think that this will do much besides draw attention to it, I think what they're reporting is fairly accurate. The only thing that I could think of is trying to get them to validate that I received the notices thta they're required to send on a repo. I like this option the least, it seems like most likely to backfire on me
- Contact them and explain what happened, and include a copy of the temporary restraining order and see if they will let me make payments and do something to improve what they're reporting. Hopefully have it seen by someone who'd been screwed over in a divorce themselves.
What would you guys suggest? One of these options, or something else?
Thanks
