wages garnished?? help!

[faiths13]

we have a collection that just showed on our credit last month. it is a year and a half old now. we never got anything from the CA about the collection, it just showed up on our credit. My husband has been trying to talk to them about a settlement and they have been very difficult. He just called to ask about having the dispute comment removed from the account and was told that the account is going to be moving to the legal dept next week if we dont make payment arrangements. My husband asked if that means they will garnish his wages and was told 'i cant say yes, but you are probably right'. How long can a company hold onto a debt like this be fore taking you to court?!

Also, she said we can pay them something now to keep it out of the legal dept, but they want much more than we can afford at the moment. is there anything we can do? she is saying we can pay with a post dated check. also, they are charging us $100 in interest a month from what it looks like. can they keep charging us interest if we make payment arrangements.

[RobertEG]

Unpaid debt can continue to accrue interest, but it is limited by the terms of your original contract with them.  What does your account agreement specify?

The VERY FIRST THING you should do is to determine the SOL status of the debt.  If the SOL has expired, you have an absolute legal defense should they initiate any legal action.  Running of an SOL is usually based on the date you were first delinquent and the account has remained in a delinquent status.  Some states provide for resetting of the running of SOL, but usually due to payments made on the debt.  Check out your state SOL statute.  They may be soliciting some form of payment to reset the running of your SOL.

They cant just garnish wages.  Wage garnishement requires a court order for satisfaction of the debt.  That usually requires that they first obtain a judgment, and then take action to require satisfaction of the judgment.  You appear to be a long way from that stage, and will be given notice from the court of any such proceedings.

For the request for a post-dated check, see FDCPA 808(2):

'The following conduct is a violation of this section:

...

"(2) The acceptance by a debt collector from any person of a check or other payment instrument postdated by more than five days unless such person is notified in writing of the debt collector's intent to deposit the check or instrument not more than ten nor less than three business days prior to such deposit."

[faiths13]

Im assuming we are not out of the SOL. Its been a year and a half. The contract was a rental agreement. We had to leave the rental early because my husband was out of work and we couldn't make rent. We we warned they might evict us, so we moved out. So in the agreement we signed Im sure it stated somewhere that we would be held responsible to pay rent even in the event of moving out before our rental lease. We moved out a month early.

I know they cant just garnish his wages, that they need to take us to court. I want to avoid at all costs that we should even get to that point. We really can't afford that! I would rather try to bargain with them to take what we can afford. The thing is I don't know if I even believe the lady about taking us to court. Or at least sending it to legal to get it ready to. I can't understand how they ignored this for so long and now want to take us to court?? In any case I do not want it to go there.

Any other advice?? Oh and if we call back to try to make a payment we can afford, do we need to get any contract or anything from them?? I have never had to do this before.