How do you get sued if you're not there? We're also in DEEP HOCK!!

[Flamingo]

I would LOVE TO! Where do I go for the counseling?

I tried some debt counseling places and they told me that they could not help. All they asked is how much credit card debt I had. I told them, "It's the $1658/mo. in car payments that are killing me. The unsecured debt is easy stuff. We can pay that." Then they replied, "Sorry, we don't do auto loans." Why can't they reduce the payments of the cars?!?!?

If they could get these payments from $1658 to something like $500/mo., that would help tremendously.

I will have to start adding up the debts into a spread sheet as the bills come in. As of now, I have no idea how much the bills are. My wife gets the bills and files them away. I've been just trying to make the minimum payments.

First you need to get a handle on exactly what is coming in and what is going out. Your spreadsheet idea is marvelous and a good start. You are also going to be shocked. Your wife also needs a dose of reality and it sounds like she is hiding bills from you so you don't see what is going on. You BOTH need to sit down and do this to get your lives in order. If you don't, it will just become worse. Make a column of ALL your bills showing the monthly payment and the balance due as of the moment. Make another column of income coming in. The difference in the figures will shock you and hopefully is a starting point for you both. The car payments are only a part of the entire picture. Once you have your debts and income in hand, to protect yourselves and if you want to keep your house, you need to go make that appointment with a bankruptcy attorney and do it together. Your wife wants to run and hide but reality is going to soon hit her hard. You live in a state that is BK friendly and is one of the reasons OJ moved there to protect his assets.

My husband and I have been in that downward spiral and only you and your wife can get yourselves out before it gets worse. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown at one point. I am giving you good advice - hopefully you will see it.

[debtmonster]

It seems like if I stop paying $740 on one car and $309 to GMAC on the other, we will have money to pay all of the unsecured debts with no problem. The cars are the killer. Why won't these debt management companies work with auto loans? We may have less than $10k in active unsecured debt. I will have to go through each bill next month and take note of the grand total that we owe. I'll do this one at a time as each bill comes and put it into Excel. I know my next check for March will be lucky to be $2k to $2200. I'm supposed to take 1/3rd of that and put it away for taxes and live on the rest until the following month. When I had my day job, I'd get paid another $2200 at the end of the month, but now that job is gone.

[Flamingo]

It seems like if I stop paying $740 on one car and $309 to GMAC on the other, we will have money to pay all of the unsecured debts with no problem. The cars are the killer. Why won't these debt management companies work with auto loans? We may have less than $10k in active unsecured debt. I will have to go through each bill next month and take note of the grand total that we owe. I'll do this one at a time as each bill comes and put it into Excel. I know my next check for March will be lucky to be $2k to $2200. I'm supposed to take 1/3rd of that and put it away for taxes and live on the rest until the following month. When I had my day job, I'd get paid another $2200 at the end of the month, but now that job is gone.

So basically at this point you are $1,049 (maybe more) over and above your other bills each month. I would not wait until next month to make a listing of your bills - you will be more in the hole and that is almost 4 weeks away. You should sit down today with your wife and not put this off anymore because it will not go away. You will just get further behind. What you had in income before you do not have now and you need to face the large difference between income and outgo. I feel that you are trying to avoid putting this information together because you are afraid to ask your wife about the bills she keeps from you or that you will find out it is worse that what you are stating. Believe me, we have been there. It is not an easy thing to face but once you do you can work to resolve the issues and hopefully start working together as to your household income and outgo which will take care of future financial problems.

[Bandit]

Consolodation makes big promises that they cannot keep plus they take your money when you could be paying the debt without them. If you consolidate or try to put everything under one payment, you WILL get sued if you can't pay & it will be harder to dishcarge in a BK because all they will see is new debt.
It is better to have debt in little increments than in one big recent bill.
You can also still get sued after you consolidate then they just try to settle with that one company.

They do not want the car debt (?) and that is a great question that I would like to know. Maybe they are figuring the same thing and if you miss a couple payments they will repo the car anyway where as with the unsecured debt they have nothing to take.

You can ask a lot of people here what happens with those kinds of loans & get educated by their experience but you wont like the answers.

You are already counting your assets which are all in the red...and with BK that is a good thing BUT! ...IN a round about way, since you & your wife have lost both full time jobs, & being caught up on taxes like you are planning, you are in a good position to get out totally of this debt with few problems, if any, thru a BK.


What do you think?, debtmonster.

We may have less than $10k in active unsecured debt.

Is this the only debt that would be discharged in a BK? Is this why you want to have the cars consolidated because there just is not enough other kind of debt to go into a BK & you feel a BK is not worth it?
If yes, I see your point. or what am I missing?

[Bandit]

So basically at this point you are $1,049 (maybe more) over and above your other bills each month. I would not wait until next month to make a listing of your bills - you will be more in the hole and that is almost 4 weeks away.

I am not sure if we have all the facts yet, Flamingo. There is something funny about this particular debt and makes it unique. Most people go in for unsecured, medical, divorce & things like that, where as this one has me still wondering what exactly happened

I know the job loss is there but the debt itself is different because is it more like car & house(?), I think.

[Flamingo]

It seems like if I stop paying $740 on one car and $309 to GMAC on the other, we will have money to pay all of the unsecured debts with no problem. The cars are the killer. Why won't these debt management companies work with auto loans? We may have less than $10k in active unsecured debt. I will have to go through each bill next month and take note of the grand total that we owe. I'll do this one at a time as each bill comes and put it into Excel. I know my next check for March will be lucky to be $2k to $2200. I'm supposed to take 1/3rd of that and put it away for taxes and live on the rest until the following month. When I had my day job, I'd get paid another $2200 at the end of the month, but now that job is gone.

Debtmonster...in a previous posting you state "Why do I worry? Because we now have $100k+ in new debt, not including our house that I don't want this rollercoaster ride to start all over again. All of the other debts are now just about past the statue of limitations for my state." Above you state that you have less than $10k in active unsecured debt. And you state you just have two car payments which total $1,049 over and above your total monthly outlay in bills. I am a bit confused. If I were you I would definately sit down and get a complete listing of your income and outlay each month. I don't really think you have a full grip on your situation and without it on actual paper in front of you that you don't actually know what is going on. I wish you well and hope you can get things together. Maybe when you get that list completed and post it on here we can be of more help to you (debts, monthly payments, income and asset listing).

[debtmonster]

We bought three 2007 cars within the past 12 months, plus a Mac computer, tiles for the floor, a sound system with some $400 front speakers and $1200 receiver. I don't want to lose all of this stuff. You have no idea what it's like without any form of entertainment. If this stuff goes back, it will be no different than sitting in a jail cell out here. There's no restaurants or anything to do. Once and if the home theater is gone, we will have to drive HOURS for any real form of entertainment. The satellite dish will have to be shut off. That's $112/mo. They will want a large cancellation fee for that. We have 2 year contracts on our cellphones with $200 cancellation fees for those.

Car #1 was $17000
Car #2 was $25000 + the car we traded was upside down... so I think we financed $27000-28000 or so.
Car #3 was $41000

So that's well over $80k just in car loans.

A friend of mine bought a Dodge truck, Chrysler 300 and Scion for his daughter and he paid about the same money, if not more than I did. So it doesn't seem that unusual.

I need to just take note of each bill as it comes in so I can make a list and then I can post it here at the end of April and we'll see where we stand. Right now I am going to see if I can even find any job that pays $8-10/hr. working in a warehouse or anything.

The thing is, if I did get a job, it will cost about $50-70/wk in fuel to get there with gas prices the way they are now.

Why can't they make Geo Metro's again? These are the cars we need so badly with today's gas prices. Not $20,000 to $45,000 hyrbids!!

Used cars don't work out for me. People simply don't take care of their cars because they know they will not keep them long enough. Every single used car I have ever bought in my entire life HAS HAD MAJOR PROBLEMS. They looked great when we bought them and then fell apart shortly after. I've been stranded many times and got fed up with it, so that's why we got all new cars.

I would have gotten only 2 cars from the start but when I got car #3, car #2 was too upside down to trade in. We didn't have $10,000 down, so it was cheaper to rotate the 3 cars. With the 100,000 miles we drive per year to get to work, it seemed okay at the time, plus the fact that we made sometimes $8,000 to $10,000 per month. $1600/mo. wasn't a killer then like it is now.

[Flamingo]

We bought three 2007 cars within the past 12 months, plus a Mac computer, tiles for the floor, a sound system with some $400 front speakers and $1200 receiver. I don't want to lose all of this stuff. You have no idea what it's like without any form of entertainment. If this stuff goes back, it will be no different than sitting in a jail cell out here. There's no restaurants or anything to do. Once and if the home theater is gone, we will have to drive HOURS for any real form of entertainment. The satellite dish will have to be shut off. That's $112/mo. They will want a large cancellation fee for that. We have 2 year contracts on our cellphones with $200 cancellation fees for those.

Car #1 was $17000
Car #2 was $25000 + the car we traded was upside down... so I think we financed $27000-28000 or so.
Car #3 was $41000

So that's well over $80k just in car loans.

A friend of mine bought a Dodge truck, Chrysler 300 and Scion for his daughter and he paid about the same money, if not more than I did. So it doesn't seem that unusual.

I need to just take note of each bill as it comes in so I can make a list and then I can post it here at the end of April and we'll see where we stand. Right now I am going to see if I can even find any job that pays $8-10/hr. working in a warehouse or anything.

The thing is, if I did get a job, it will cost about $50-70/wk in fuel to get there with gas prices the way they are now.

Why can't they make Geo Metro's again? These are the cars we need so badly with today's gas prices. Not $20,000 to $45,000 hyrbids!!

Used cars don't work out for me. People simply don't take care of their cars because they know they will not keep them long enough. Every single used car I have ever bought in my entire life HAS HAD MAJOR PROBLEMS. They looked great when we bought them and then fell apart shortly after. I've been stranded many times and got fed up with it, so that's why we got all new cars.

I would have gotten only 2 cars from the start but when I got car #3, car #2 was too upside down to trade in. We didn't have $10,000 down, so it was cheaper to rotate the 3 cars. With the 100,000 miles we drive per year to get to work, it seemed okay at the time, plus the fact that we made sometimes $8,000 to $10,000 per month. $1600/mo. wasn't a killer then like it is now.

You are not going to like to have what I have to say but I think you already know it - you are living beyond your means. Many of us understand, have been there and have also been in denial and justifying our actions. While you try to justify your vehicle purchases and other purchase because you had large income at the time, did you have savings put away or thought about what could happen to everything in the event of a job loss? While I understand what has happened to you, it happens to a lot of people and once the job goes and the income cannot be replaced anywhere close to where it was, that is the beginning of the "downward spiral" that heads to BK. You just simply cannot afford to pay your bills anymore and there is really no way out. It is embarrassing and frustrating and is a horrid time in ones life to face and deal with all that. That is where you are now. You will learn shortly that you cannot continue to justify all this because the problem will just get bigger. Rigiht now with the amount of your debt, there is simply no way with both of you out of work or you getting a job paying $10 or so an hour, that you can get out of this. You would both have to get jobs at what you were making before and even then struggle to get the debt paid and your lives back in order for a while.

You should investigate your options as to bankruptcy but I don't think that is what you have in mind as it is something I don't believe you want to do. Your reasons for starting this thread were around trying to avoid paying debts so if you can't take advice from those on here who have been through similar situations, you will have to make decisions based on what you feel will work for you. Best of luck to you.

[treehugger1]

in my opinion, you cannot "avoid" your debt. Eventually, your debt will track you down. Whether your are served "officially" or not, someone will eventually get a judgment if you don't pay.

Options:

Bankruptcy - When a debtor is insolvent. You can work through the court system and file formally, or you can live in your bankrupt state and attempt to work out payment programs on your own, or work with some credit counseling organization.

Bankruptcy through the court systems at least provides a forseeable ending time (0 - 5 years) depending upon chapter 7 or 13.

Debt counseling - What I've researched, most of the time a debt counseling service is more costly than a 7 or 13 bankruptcy, and your credit is not necessarily saved.

Do-it-yourself method - This is mine. Attempt to negotiate with creditors and or collection attorneys to work out payment plans that are better, or at least as good as what you might get in a 13 payment plan. My experience is that if you have a solid income, this can be accomplished. It is incredibly HARD work and for a year or so will possibly require as much time as a second full-time job.

A mixture of debt counseling and do-it-yourself - There are some creditors who will not work with you and will only work through some debt counseling service. At first I heard that counseling services will only deal with you if you give them all your debt and work with their program. The numbers such services gave to me left me with less money per month than a chapter 13. I have one creditor who will not work with me totaling $13K on four credit cards (you can guess who this is.) The others all gave me 5 -year payment plans with 0% - 10% interest. There is no way that a debt counseling company can come close to this. However, yesterday I explained this predicament to a local service, and I now believe they might work with me and the OC to work out a 4-5 year plan. Everyone gains: the OC gets about 2%, the debt counseling agency gets about 2%, and my payments get cut down to 40% of the original minimum payments at 29% interest.

Back to the summons and judgment - Regardless of whether or not you were properly served, someone can get a judgment, and seeking refuge from the judgment might be temporary, at best. Do you have anything to lose by contacting the creditor's attorney or collection attorney to find out "what is going on?" Do you want to deal with the debt, or do you want to avoid dealing with it?

My advice to anyone is that when you know the wind is blowing away from you, talk to all the players involved. Record every phone call (if legal in your state,) and eventually make a decision related to bankruptcy of working on plans with your creditors/collection agencies. Avoiding debt is only the point of view of the debtor. If you have debt, eventually someone will take up the cause to collect on it (OC, CA, or junk debt buyer.)

Just my humble opinion. If all else fails, seek refuge in your local bankruptcy court.

[debtmonster]

The question still goes unanswered. What is the harm of being sued or getting a judgement?

Nobody calls us. We have not been late on anything yet until Feb 29th when we didn't make the car payment. The inlaws deposited $400 to help us pay our GMAC loan. We used my MLM money to pay the $740 car payment on the other one.

Everybody talks about getting a judgment and all but never explains what happens after. So you get one and then what? As long as you don't eve use credit again after you get one, I don't see what the harm is. My friend owns a computer repair shop and has been sued many times and the people always win because they are the customer and he is the business owner. They've put many judgments on him. They had a sheriff come to take anything of value and he said, "All of this stuff belongs to customers. The floor mat is the only thing that belongs to the company. You can take that." The cop shrugged and left never to return.

I know the debt is always there, but the light bulb still isn't going on here. As long as both me and my wife are both unemployed, there's no wages to garnish. I don't know if they do that in Florida anyway.

If somebody here has had a judgment and bad things came after, please post what these "bad things" are so I can get an idea. I came here to learn more. I went $2200 on a Mac computer for my MLM business. We can't simply give that back for me going bankrupt. I will go out of business and not only not have a job, but we will then lose our house and everything from the one thing that helps make us a little money in this horrible economy where over 60,000 jobs were lost last month.

From what I'm understanding, judgments to me don't really seem to be a big deal unless you were planning on buying a house or finance a car anytime soon, which we have no plans on doing for at least 7 to 10 years, if ever now.

[Flamingo]

The question still goes unanswered. What is the harm of being sued or getting a judgement?
Nobody calls us. We have not been late on anything yet until Feb 29th when we didn't make the car payment. The inlaws deposited $400 to help us pay our GMAC loan. We used my MLM money to pay the $740 car payment on the other one.
Everybody talks about getting a judgment and all but never explains what happens after. So you get one and then what? As long as you don't eve use credit again after you get one, I don't see what the harm is. My friend owns a computer repair shop and has been sued many times and the people always win because they are the customer and he is the business owner. They've put many judgments on him. They had a sheriff come to take anything of value and he said, "All of this stuff belongs to customers. The floor mat is the only thing that belongs to the company. You can take that." The cop shrugged and left never to return.
I know the debt is always there, but the light bulb still isn't going on here. As long as both me and my wife are both unemployed, there's no wages to garnish. I don't know if they do that in Florida anyway.
If somebody here has had a judgment and bad things came after, please post what these "bad things" are so I can get an idea. I came here to learn more. I went $2200 on a Mac computer for my MLM business. We can't simply give that back for me going bankrupt. I will go out of business and not only not have a job, but we will then lose our house and everything from the one thing that helps make us a little money in this horrible economy where over 60,000 jobs were lost last month.

From what I'm understanding, judgments to me don't really seem to be a big deal unless you were planning on buying a house or finance a car anytime soon, which we have no plans on doing for at least 7 to 10 years, if ever now.

When a judgment is issued and on record, that judgment will need to be satisfied before clear title to your house can be passed if you ever want to sell or refinance your house (property/title searches turn up the judgments). The creditor can have a judgment issued or "lien" against any real estate you currently own or may own in the future. This will prevent you from selling or refinancing your property without first paying your judgment. From your postings I believe you own your house. Rack up several and you have a big problem and even if you never sell your house, your creditors will go after your estate upon your passing and the judgments would have to be satisfied by your heir(s) from your estate before your estate can be closed. You seriously need to talk to a lawyer about your current and/or future situations as to your debts and assets.

[debtmonster]

Yeah, we owna home. If I get a bunch of judgments, I can simply wait several years until all of my other assets are totally depreciated before doing BK. Right now Rooms to Go will want $4800 worth of furniture back that we purchased in October/November 2007.

Aren't we only allowed to have $2,000 worth of stuff? So I will have to wait until everything we own in the house is worthless first. The big screen TV we bought in early 2005 won't be worth spit in a few more years. The bulbs go out in them and are costly to replace. Anything electronic is worthless once it is old and outdated.

We also bought a Bowflex. I don't want that getting taken away neither. I am so out of shape and need to be able to work out so I can eventually be in shape to get some kind of warehouse job or something since I have been a computer programmer my whole life. My knees are shot and walking/jogging are out of the question. I need strength-training now.

[Flamingo]

Yeah, we owna home. If I get a bunch of judgments, I can simply wait several years until all of my other assets are totally depreciated before doing BK. Right now Rooms to Go will want $4800 worth of furniture back that we purchased in October/November 2007.

Aren't we only allowed to have $2,000 worth of stuff? So I will have to wait until everything we own in the house is worthless first. The big screen TV we bought in early 2005 won't be worth spit in a few more years. The bulbs go out in them and are costly to replace. Anything electronic is worthless once it is old and outdated.

We also bought a Bowflex. I don't want that getting taken away neither. I am so out of shape and need to be able to work out so I can eventually be in shape to get some kind of warehouse job or something since I have been a computer programmer my whole life. My knees are shot and walking/jogging are out of the question. I need strength-training now.

Unfortunately, I don't think anyone on here can help you. If you are drowning in debt now, both jobless and no income, how on earth will you be able to wait "several years" to file BK? With bad credit and judgments on your record, where will you get money to continue buying items? Your cards will eventually hit the limit and no one will issue you more credit. It's a black hole. I really don't think you realize how much in financial trouble you are. I think you are more worried about how you appear to people as to your community standing and what you have to show as assets compared to what is actually going on in your life. I answered your question truthfully as to your original question as to judgments. The rest is up to you as to how you want to handle your finances and your life. Remember, as I stated before, no one is going to come knocking on your door and bail you out. It's up to you. Eventually, no matter how you handle this, it will come out because of the debt you are in now. Many people are having difficult financial times now - you are not the only one. The key is not to let it get worse to the point where you have to apply for welfare/food stamps or get handouts of food from your local church or food bank.

Talking to a BK attorney is free and no one will know. It's kept private. Find one who gives free intial consultations and make an appointment to get the advice you truly need for your situation and which will be under the laws of your state. Also do some research on judgments and bankruptcy in your state - if you call up your State website, it will list bankruptcy court links and that site will be chock full of information for you as to what is required in your state to file. Do your homework as to your present situation but there is no one who is going to hold your hand through the process or get you out of denial. There have been several of us trying to help you on here but we cannot physically come to your house and help you do all this or give you the motivation you need to get yourself out of trouble. It's up to you.

[debtmonster]

Thanks for your wonderful advice. I will be taking a lot of it in consideration and will forward the information I learn here to my wife.

As of right now, we have no W2 income to garnish. As soon as a judgment starts to come, I will stop paying everything and just give our money to a BK attorney.

As far as we live, we have no community to impress. We bought everything we have for our own use. We live so far out that there is nobody to impress. We live in a town with 2,000 people, if not less. To me it looks like a town with maybe 150-200 people max. We never have a single person pass down our street other than the two old people who live at the end of our dirt road.

[debtmonster]

Don't you thin I tried them already? NOBODY wants to buy any of the stuff I try to sell on there. I tried putting beautiful pictures of the stuff I had. We had 3 calls and nobody bought a thing other than the 2 year old sofa that we gave away for $.10 cents on the dollar!!!

There's no market here as everyone in this area either doesn't have a computer or they are unemployed themselves. There's no jobs out here or any businesses. Most people here are snowbirds. I found this all out after moving here.

From what I understand, we're only allowed to keep $2,000 worth of stuff unlike other states that let you keep a ton. Wasn't it Kentucky that lets you keep $21,000 or some crazy amount of stuff?

The biggest things I want to go back is our cars.

Do we have to get rid of all of our stainless steel appliances or is that part of the house which is exempt? These were financed our on HELOC.