Can CCard Cos sue after Chargin off?

[overspent]

I am in the 5th month of no payment on all my Credit Cards. A couple of them already sent letters saying accounts will be charged off in less than 2 months. If they charge of the accounts can they still sue?

Thanks for your answers.

[DeadManCrawling]

Yes.

Or:

More likely they will sell the debt to someone else who will sue.

Chargeoff is only an accounting term, and does not remove or forgive the debt.

[catleg]

I got sued by Chase after 5 months, though I didn't find out about it for another month or two. Citi sued several times between 7-9 months. Discover sued about 9 months. BofA never got around to a suit. US Bank sold off a card account promptly at 6 months to a JDB who sued shortly thereafter when I CD'd their contact attempts.

All in all I managed to generate about $1100 in "economic stimulus" for the NJ court system (from filing fees paid by the creditors' lawsuits).

[treehugger1]

That's pretty much my current read on the state of suits here in my district/county. Discover, Chase, and Citi all seem to be first in line to snort around in the troughs of judgment. BoA sold my accounts to JDB's and they have not done jack. Crap1 now appears to be increasing litigation here using an attorney firm from upstate. From what I can tell, it appears the C1 suits are in the neighborhood of $3000 - $5000.

What is interesting is that here in Oregon, attorneys can not use small claims, so plaintiff's must pay the circuit court costs to initiate lawsuits. In addition, the laws limit future attorney fees related to recovery based on judgments. Each successful civil case includes awarding a prevailing party fee. This only happens once! The judgment creditor/attorney can continue to bill garnishment costs, etc, but there are no more attorney fees awarded.

A friend of mine just informed me that in the event a copy of a writ of garnishment shows any values other than those awarded by the court of the costs of writs, service, etc, I should file a challenge of garnishment request. I guess this really screws things up, and the upstate attorney might be forced to take a day or two and come visit our fine little county. I have not given this much thought before, but since it costs $0.00 to file a garnishment challenge, and the challenge form is a standardized form that anyone can fill out, there doesn't appear to be anything to lose.

The laws of each state come into play when it comes to lawsuits. It baffles me that attorneys for big CC companies often sue for the $3000 - $5000 credit card, but don't even bother with the $10K+ cards. Once a creditor/law firm has a judgment, they can collect what they can under the enforcement /exemption laws. Why not go for the bigger accounts? It makes no sense. This is especially true if the law firm has done their homework and realizes the debtor has no assets other than wages. Take the larger balance account and keep chipping away due to garnishment.

Ah, I digress...

[GoingDown]

Who they sue and what amount they sue over varies widely from person to person.

There must be some protocol they follow or some database they look at to help them determine which people to sue.

I think it goes like this...

1. Is the debtor employed? if yes, then sue.

2. Does the debtor own real estate? if yes, then sue

3. Is the debtor paying other bills on his/her credit report? if yes, then sue

4. Can we scare the debtor on the phone and get him/her to agree to a payment plan? if yes, then sue

The only one that sued me was CrapOne over a $300 credit card, but they did it in the wrong state, and they did it before it even charged off. They still have not received a penny of that judgment. And they have stopped calling me about it and stopped writing me about it.

the rest of my charged off credit cards range from $800 to $17,000 but none of them have bothered to sue me. Most of them have sold the debt to junk debt buyers, and some of the junk debt buyers have sold the debt to other junk debt buyers.

Some of them threatened lawsuits, to which I responded that I am judgment proof and explained what I meant by that so they could tell I was not bluffing. I also included a Cease and Desist Communications letter, and that was the last I heard from them.

There is now only one debt that is not beyond the Arizona Statute of Limitations, and it is a relatively small debt. If any of the SOL debts try to sue me, I will respond with a written answer and use the SOL as my defense against the lawsuit.

For such a small amount, it is not worth filing BK over it, so I will hold on to my BK option and only use it when I get some huge medical debt or something like that.

[flyinbroke]

#1 may also depend on what state one lives in...if it is one of the four that does not allow paycheck garnishments then they may look for other ways to get the money in a suit. We shall see...I am paying some of them because:

a. I can afford to pay them (unlike the crazy payments and interest rates of the others)
b. I had used them rather recently and want to make payments, the ones not getting paid were opted out and thus closed.
c. They are linked to secured items, are not dischargeable or are where I bank
d. If I decide not to hit the nuke button, I would like to recover financially a little quicker.

I own nothing so I am pretty collection proof. It seems that many who are sued have things or homes or other means of potential collection. We shall see how this plays out...if I do get sued, there is always Plan BK.

[LostNFound]

1. Is the debtor employed? if yes, then sue.
2. Does the debtor own real estate? if yes, then sue
3. Is the debtor paying other bills on his/her credit report? if yes, then sue
4. Can we scare the debtor on the phone and get him/her to agree to a payment plan? if yes, then sue

(1) Yes, husband/wife are both employed and currently OVER the means test to file Chap 7.
(2) Yes, we own real estate. Including my personal home, we have 5 other homes (rentals). We recently sold one (Dec 09) and selling another (May 10).
(3) Yes, we are currently on all 6 mortgages and car payments. We just refinanced a leased auto last week with terrible credit (560's).
(4)Nope. Can't scare me because I refuse to talk to them.

We stopped paying all of our credit cards in Feb 09. I have been on this roller coaster ride for 2 years prior to that before throwing in the towel. I expected to be sued by now and I have no idea why they are taking longer to come after me. Our rentals are not cash flowing to the point that I'm about ready to hand the keys to the bank. We are working very hard to sell them and hope to break even in the sale, but it will not clean up the $110K credit card debt that is still with us. Looks like Chap 7 may not be an option for us...and I'm not sure I'm ready to consider Chap 13. Time will tell.

[treehugger1]

LNF, Yes Bk can be a difficult decision. This is particularly true if a BK 13 is involved with a high percentage payoff plan. It's not that this is a big deal, however, for debtors in their 50's and 60's a BK 13 can seriously change how they contribute to retirement accounts. If one has no assets but has high wages and is within 5 - 10 years of retiring, it might make more sense to live with lawsuits and garnishments while continuing to build retirement investment accounts. In addition, it could well be the case that some creditors will never sue within the SOL guidelines and it might make more sense to file a BK 13 5-6 years from the date of last CC use. The number of creditors/CA's/JDB's who issue claims might be significantly reduced and a BK 13 plan might pay off very early.