Post-Discharge Attempts to Collect - SCARY

[TexasLadybug]

Hi Everyone!
I have about 9 more months to pay on my 13 BK, so hopefully I will be discharged sometime around the end of July 2009. I've been reading several articles about the unscrupulous tactics certain creditors are now using...and apparently very successfully at times...to intimidate, threaten, and harrass someone in an attempt to collect on an account AFTER it is discharged. This is scaring me to death! I hope eventually to sell my current home and purchase another one, and knowing one of my creditors (Sears to be exact, who sold the account to someone else) could possibly come sneaking out of the woodwork and prevent me from obtaining a mortgage just makes me cringe. I keep exact and accurate records, watch my credit reports carefully, and hopefully this will help me if anything like this should happen. Has...or is...anyone going through something like this? Any advice you can give me would certainly be very much appreciated! Thanks!
Texas Ladybug

[funspot08]

You'll be Fine

Having been through three years of a 13, I know that every scenario runs through your mind and it's scary. Don't be concerned about post-discharge collection attempts. Your lawyer or you simply will contact the court and file against the collector if they don't cease and the penalty for them from the court won't be pretty. After 13, all of your creditors are clear and if anyone tries anything, you're protected.

[Flamingo]

TexasLadyBug - relax - it doesn't happen that often. When you are discharged if any of your creditors discharged in your BK attempts to collect on the discharged debt, just notify the attorney who handled your Chapter 13 right away.

[magyar123]

Sometime last year or earlier this year there was an interesting article called "Prisoners of Debt" which outlined how creditors just sell their bad debts to collection agencies WITHOUT distinguishing valid debts from debts that were discharged previously in bankruptcies. When one of these goons gets one of those and contacts the consumer the consumer will just have to send them a copy of the discharge document and tell them to go jump into shark infested waters - or something stronger languaged.

[TexasLadybug]

Thank you everyone who responded! I really appreciate your support and reassurance! And by the way....the forum is absolutely wonderful. I have learned so much, and often wish I had discovered it before I filed.
Thanks again!
Texas Ladybug (Jane)

[holding on]

They mostly get people who are uneducated about the law. BUT...there is a level of anxiety they can put on one for instance if they report the zombie debt as active to a credit agency and this screws up your credit rebuild process or nixes you getting a home or something else like that.