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How to Legally Eliminate Credit Card Debt

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If you cannot afford to pay your credit card debt and would like to avoid bankruptcy, how can you overcome the burden of too much credit card debt?  The answer is simple.  Just stop paying that unsecured credit card debt. Focus on more important monthly necessities and secured debt.

If you cannot pay, do not attempt to settle the debt and saddle yourself with more payments. That simply prolongs your financial stress and bad credit.

Yes, bankruptcy does offer you protection from creditors, while this selective, informal bankruptcy does not. But, you can avoid debt collectors with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and local consumer protection laws. That  will prevent a ten-year stain of bankruptcy on your credit report. Read more »

Banks and Junk Debt Buyers Cannot Document Their Credit Card Lawsuits

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New York Times’ Joe Nocera’s recent column Why People Hate the Banks has many pundits wondering why people who owe and are confronted with credit card lawsuits do not answer their summons and demand proper documentation.

It used to be that an original creditor, a credit card bank, was the most difficult to defeat in  a credit card lawsuit. But, J.P. Morgan Chase Co.’s problems with robo-signing credit card debt affidavits, as originally reported in American Banker, have caused followers of credit card debt trends to revise that thinking.

Now that Chase is no longer suing, what is happening to its outstanding credit card debts?  They are being sold to junk debt buyers (JDBs).   A recent purchaser of my Credit Card Debt Survival Guide is being sued in Maryland for a Chase credit card account purchased by a large, well known junk debt buyer.

American Banker started with Chase, then recently it pointed out the problems of Bank of America’s credit card debt Read more »

Credit Card Debt Collector Lawsuits: Where’s the Beef? Part 2

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Debt collectors threaten consumers with credit card lawsuits for credit card debt they cannot afford to pay. If or when a summons does arrive most consumers do not respond because they know they owe the debt, so they conclude they have no defense and suffer a default judgment. But now given recent developments, if they do respond and demand the junk debt buyer or even the original credit-card-bank creditor legally document their credit card debt, they will probably make the lawsuit go away. JP Morgan Chase Co.’s robo-signing problems (see Part I) have American Banker concluding, “With the template for [...] Read more »

Credit Card Debt Collector Lawsuits: Where’s the Beef? Part I

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When a debt collector attorney confronts you with a photocopy of your signed credit card application, a copy of a generic, unsigned credit card agreement and a few of your past credit card statements in a credit card lawsuit, what do you do?  Without thinking, you admit to the debt, making his case for him.  Because, in today’s legal environment, without your admission, his documents will not be strong enough to get him a judgment against you for the debt you owe. Last June, a New York judge threw out JP Morgan Chase Co.’s lawsuit to collect a few thousand [...] Read more »

Credit Card Debt: How Sick Are You?

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The easy answer to that question is to calculate how long it will take you to pay off your credit card debt, when you can afford to do that.  (Do not use commas or decimal points, e.g., $50,000 at 20%, $1000/month would be 50000, 20 and 1000.) Do your debt calculator calculations indicate that you are ailing financially?  What are you options–debt counseling, debt management, debt settlement, debt negotiation, or debt consolidation?  Those professionals all want you to pay them to help you get out of debt.  Can you afford to pay them? Today, one in seven consumers is faced [...] Read more »

Credit Card Debt Summons – How You Can Resist Collection Attorneys

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A proper written response to a credit card debt summons is an answer and denial of the charges with a statement of your affirmative defenses.    Those defenses are focused on a demand for documentation of the credit card debt they allege you owe. The plaintiff must prove you owe the debt, and they cannot do that.  So, they let the clock tick away to the next court date for your case.  They hope you will get cold feet and try to settle. They hope you will admit to the debt.  This recently happened to one of my ebook customers.  [...] Read more »

One in Seven Consumers Are or Will Be in Contact with Debt Collectors

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Knowing how to deal with  debt collectors when you owe and cannot afford to pay is becoming a basic survival skill in today’s economy. According to blogger Matt Stoller, a former senate policy advisor and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, the Federal Reserve’s last Quarterly Release on Household Debt and Credit  the number of people subject to third party collections has doubled since 2000, from a little less than 7% to a little over 14% of consumers.  Ten years ago, one in fourteen American consumers were pursued by debt collectors.  Today it’s one in seven. Most of those contacts [...] Read more »

Despite Publicized Crackdowns, Debt Collectors Likely to Continue with Lies and Threats

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A recent issue of Forbes Magazine reports that in the wake of the Great Recession, debt collectors are not faring as well as we would assume. They are feeling the difficult economy as much as most other businesses, rather than cashing in on the increased number of consumer debts. Excerpts from the Forbes article — The Myth of the Debt Collection Boom According to a recent study conducted by Ernst & Young on behalf of accounts receivable management (ARM) trade group ACA International, Employment in the ARM industry declined 4.5 percent from 2007 to 2010. Why? {Forbes has} been told [...] Read more »

More on Robo-Signing by Debt Collectors to Win Credit Card Lawsuits

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If you are worried about the possibility of having a credit card debt lawsuit filed against you because you have credit card debt you cannot afford to pay, you are one of 30 million Americans who could be affected by debt collection, according to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. While the CFPB is likely to put an end to it, you should be on the look out for the robo-signing of documents used in credit card lawsuits and to threaten you into paying what you cannot afford to pay. A blog, A New Kind of Killer App: RoboSigning 2.0, in [...] Read more »

Debt Collector/Debt Buyer Fined $2.5 Million for Lying to Consumers about Debt Statutes of Limitations

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Here are more reasons why you can successful not pay credit card debt you can not afford to pay, if you know what you are doing with a debt collector. You do not have to pay if your debt is older than your state’s statute of limitations for debt collection by court action.  The statute of limitations (SOL) for open accounts begins when a consumer fails to make a payment and varies from state to state.  Here is a state-by-state breakdown of SOL. You should not make a token a payment on an old debt to get a debt collector [...] Read more »

New Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to Regulate Debt Collectors and Credit Reporting Agencies

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Consumers who have fallen behind in their payments of unsecured credit card debt worry about debt collector phone calls and collection attorney lawsuits.   The truth is debt collectors have trouble documenting credit card debt well enough for a court to grant a judgment against an alleged credit card debtor.  To make up for that fact, debt collectors tell lies and make threats over the telephone.  And, collection attorneys file numerous lawsuits hoping most who owe will not respond and suffer a default judgment. According to the Los Angeles Times, “the new Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is ready to crack down on [...] Read more »

Major Credit Card Bank Stops All Credit Card Lawsuits

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CBSnews.com recently reported JPMorgan Chase & Co. has stopped filing credit card lawsuits around the country to collect credit card debt. The American Banker reported on Jan. 10, 2012 Chase had shut down a national collections operations responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in monthly judgments. In April 2011 the Wall Street Journal first reported that Chase had stopped filing credit card debt lawsuits in Dade County, Florida. CBS News speculates that the homeowner foreclosure illegal robo-signing of documents may also be a problem for bank credit card debt documentation. “In a federal whistle-blower complaint filed last year, a [...] Read more »

The Credit Repair Part of Credit Card Debt Relief

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Where your credit is concerned, non-payment of credit card debt is better than bankruptcy.  Bankruptcy is a ten-year deep freeze on your credit, while the effects of late payments and charge-offs ease with time.  As those bad marks age to their seven year limit on your credit report, your credit score will improve, if you are making timely payments on other debts.  This final piece of credit card debt relief, healthy credit, will happen a lot faster without bankruptcy, To improve your credit score, if you are having difficulty paying your credit card debts, first check it. You will be [...] Read more »

How to get rid of credit card debt – How Can You Get Out Of Credit Card Debt?

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Too many people choose the wrong kind of credit card debt help. They deceive themselves into believing they can manage a debt management payment plan, or they can afford to begin a lump sum debt settlement savings plan (where they skip their monthly payments to bank that money with a debt settlement firm to one day offer a final lump sum settlement amount). Are you looking for ways how to get rid of credit card debt ? Can you afford to pay your monthly credit card statements or not?  Or more basically, are you actually willing to face the truth [...] Read more »

Can’t Pay Credit Card Debt? How This is Related to Occupy Wall Street

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How does credit card debt relief fit into the protests against very uneven wealth distribution in this country . . . or, into the clash between traditional American values and deep-pocket, short-term profiteers looking to the U.S. taxpayer for a bailout when things go wrong with their financial schemes? Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup, and Capital One, all too-big-to-fail institutions, all bailed out for billions in 2008, issue over two-thirds of the credit cards used in the U.S. While they each benefited from a bailout when misfortune or poor judgment befell THEM, none of their credit card holders can hope [...] Read more »