Quote:
Originally Posted by breakmystride
I asked for a payment plan, and I'm still worried about how I'm going to make my payment every month. The lowest they could go was still over fifty dollars a month, which considering my income, still seems like a lot. But it's better than having to come up with more than a thousand dollars right now.
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If $50 a month is too much, then it might as well be a thousand dollars. If you can pay it, good. If you can't, then you are back to the original dilemma. What happens if you just cannot pay. Well . . . they can sue you. (Usually, they just threaten to sue . . . because they know that no judge can make you fork over what you don't have.) A judge can order garnishment of your income, or seizing of your assets. A judge can order that your bank give to the hospital part, or all, of what you have on deposit. But, if there is nothing there, then there is not a lot that can be done to you.
There are a few things that we all should bear in mind when dealing with people we owe money to that we don't have the means to pay. There is no law that says you have to talk on the phone to anyone. When creditors call asking the same questions over and over, you have a perfect right to say, "I've already responded to those questions, and I really have nothing new to add at this point in time. If that changes, I will contact you. For now, I'll have to say goodbye." If you stick to that, you can get those phone calls to slow down quite a bit."
If they can't get at you on the phone, then their next move is to threaten to sue you. You may even get a summons delivered to your door stating that they've filed with the local court to do that. (I got a couple of those.) Despite doing that, they are not likely to actually pay a lawyer to pursue this, if they believe that you don't have anything for them to take from. Not all resources can be taken. For instance, a judge will not allow a person's income from Social Security to be tapped by creditors. (It can be tapped by the IRS, if you owe taxes.)
If what you have is barely enough to survive on, regardless of where it comes from, a judge can protect it on the basis of you being in a hardship situation. But you have to ask the judge to do that.
The main thing I've learned from having debt I couldn't pay is that I might as well just RELAX about it. Being poor is hard enough, without worrying about the things you can't really do anything about.