**Disclaimer – Debtprison.net does not administer legal or financial advice. The contents of this website are my opinions on collection agencies and how to deal with them. Nothing on this website should be interpreted as legal advice or council. No opinions on this website should be used to replace the advice of your financial advisor or your legal council.

Debt can only follow you if it knows where you are

Let’s assume that you are a debtor with $50,000 in credit card debt and you can no longer make the minimum payments.  Your goal is to make a fresh start.  Filing bankruptcy is one option. Leaving the country is another… but also staying in the U.S. and avoiding being located by the collection agency can provide resolution.  Here’s why.

If you default on your payments your accounts will likely move into the hands of a collection agency or ‘law firm’.  Either way they still have to follow the law in order to force you to pay.  This means taking you to civil court to obtain a judgment.  But before they win a judgment against you in civil court, you have to be served a summons.  They can’t service you if they don’t know where you are.  Therefore, if the court cannot service you the collection agency or ‘law firm’ will be unable to obtain a judgment in their favor.  Now all of these bill collectors will likely hit a brick wall if they can’t locate you. 

How is a civil court summons usually served?

The plaintiff (creditor/collector) has a duty to notify the defendant (you) that a law suit has been initiated. This notification is performed via the serving of a summons which must be performed according to a set of guidelines. Generally these guidelines require that a third party (deputy/constable) physically present a written summons to the other party. Generally, the law suit can not continue until the defending party has been properly notified by the service of a summons.

Normally the collection agency will provide the court with your last known address.  So if you no longer live at that address the summons will not be served and the court date postponed.  The suit will then sit idle until the collection agency provides another address where you can be served the summons.

UPDATE: 9/14/2009 on summons and service

Some version of this applies in most or all states…

How do I serve the defendant?

There are 3 ways to “serve” the defendant with papers to start your case:
 
Personal service:
Personal service means that someone gives the Summons and Complaint to the defendant.
 
Service by mail:
This means that someone mails the Summons and Complaint to the defendant. And,
 
Service by publication:
This means that you publish the Summons and Complaint in the newspaper that the defendant’s most likely to read. You have to ask the court’s permission to do this. Usually you have to try personal service a few times first.

This means they can have court against you and gain a default judgment even if they cannot personally hand you the summons. From what I’ve read this is rare… but does happen sometimes. If they have reason to believe you have valuable assets in the U.S. then this scenario becomes more likely.

***If a collection agency gets a judgment against you, even if the judgment is about to expire (SOL on the judgment), they can go back to court and get the judgment renewed! This just happened to my best friend. He thought the judgment was about to expire and then he got a summons for more court…. to renew the SOL on the judgment.

However, sometimes you can have the same name as another person – this can create problems for you.

THEN the attorney went to the county in which we both live and put a lien on my fathers house thinking it was my house. Amazing because I don’t own ANY real property and his house is in HIS name with HIS SSN. The Attys office believes his house is mine because his address is on my credit report (our stuff gets mixed up all the time on our credit reports). Their using his address as “my last known address”

I can’t believe you can go put a lien on someone’s property that easy…and then THAT person will end up having to pay an attorney to fix the problem. My father should be able to sue the attys office for placing a lien on the wrong property.

As you can see, sometimes credit history can be attached to the wrong person. And sometimes the court may think they served the correct person when they haven’t. If the court served the court summons to the wrong person then the creditor will likely get a default judgment against you. Since you won’t know about the summons – you won’t know the judgment occurred. For the sake of discussion here… we’re assuming you didn’t receive bad service and that the court was unable to deliver the summons. In which case, the collection agency’s claim against you is dead in the water. That is, unless they can find where you are!

The goal of avoiding debt payments, default judgments, and wage garnishment can often be accomplished if the collection agency cannot locate you before the Statue of Limitations expires on the debt! Whether you go abroad or stay in the U.S. – that is the only legal way of avoiding repayment on defaulted debt.  You have to prevent being served until the SOL on the debts has passed. Granted, an aggressive collector may opt for the ‘post your summons in the newspaper’… in which case the court may consider you served.

So whether you stay in the U.S. or move to another country…. their harassment of you will only end when they no longer know where you are.

See also, Debt Prison related article Debt past the SOL but Collection Agency still suing.

What about tolling a debt?

Concerning the Statute of Limitations the issue of tolling was mentioned.  Tolling means to stop the running of a statutory period (the SOL) for a certain period of time.  However, in order to toll a debt (in California), you must leave the state before the cause of action accrues. In other words, you’d have to have left before you defaulted on your debts.  Therefore, for the toll (to stop the SOL clock) to occur you would have to leave the country with your debt in good standing – this means you haven’t defaulted yet.  For California:

If, after the cause of action accrues, he departs from the State, the time of his absence is not part of the time limited for the commencement of the action.

Creditors only see your social security number

One of the ways that banks/collectors locate us is by utilizing a successful tracking system.  In the United States the system is successful because the government forces all businesses to adhere to certain legislation.  Examples are the I-9 form, the W-4 form, and the 1099.  Therefore, your taxes due, your credit report, your credit history, and even your income history all are traced by utilizing your social security number.  Therefore, becoming a working immigrant of another country or a naturalized citizen could mean no longer utilizing your SSN.  As a result, leaving the country in exchange for a new life may seem appealing to many folks.

Can a bad credit report follow you to a new country?

The short answer is no.  The long answer is… if you allow it to.  Some credit reporting agencies (Equifax – Transunion) may have offices in other countries.  For example, Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Equifax Inc. employs approximately 6,900 people in 14 countries through North America, Latin America and Europe.  If applying for credit in a foreign country (with a U.S. based CRA) your U.S. credit report may be pulled by utilizing your SSN.

In several scenarios, people have found that the United States TransUnion and the Canada TransUnion share the same data in their systems. In result, there may be a possibility of a Canadian financial institution pulling your U.S credit history. This could be good for people with positive credit and bad for those with not so good credit. Equifax may do the same and share their data between countries. We have found that Experian has no effect in foreign credit because it only conducts reports on U.S residents.

So don’t apply for credit in your new country.

How to leave the United States

To learn more about this concept please visit this link.

See also, 5 steps to getting your Passport.

** If you are $2,500 or more behind on child support payments you cannot receive a passport.

I think it’s also important to point out that collection agencies follow leads they get from people they call on the phone. So if they have your old number and your old room mate still lives there…. the old room mate could give them all of your forwarding information into your new country. Though they won’t know if it’s accurate… they’ll give it a shot and see what turns up. So make sure there are no people they could call who would give them any information (of any kind) as to your whereabouts.  One of my readers had a room mate do just that up in New York.  Now the collection agency has his phone number and address in Canada.  However, in Canada he received a clean credit record and fresh credit. 

What if you leave the United States and the collection agency finds out where you are?

Let’s suppose the collection agency achieved a judgment against you to repay the debt.  And for arguments sake, let’s assume they’ve located you in another country.  Have you ever heard of a long arm statute?  Well neither had I.  Normally this is a statute that is applied when the court of one state needs to obtain jurisdiction in another state.  In that case they try and implement the long arm statute.  But can this statute be applied internationally?  The short answer is yes.  But the long answer is…. it depends on the other country.  Some countries may allow a U.S. court to obtain jurisdiction through their court system.  Now at this point… I’m thinking you must have owed this creditor a truck load of money because the price tag for your harassment is getting expensive!

If the collection agency has a judgment and your new address… the agency could push for long arm jurisdiction through the court system.  This request would be made possible through your new country’s U.S. Embassy or other such legal representation.  The new country may then decide to assist the U.S. court in exercising the judgment.  Some countries arrest defendants for debt… while others do not.  Does this mean if your new country cooperates with the U.S. court you may be arrested until court is held?  Maybe, I honestly couldn’t find a definite answer to that question. But the best solution would be to select a country which is favorable to debtors. 

However, I failed to find an actual source where this situation occurred concerning overseas arrest for U.S. debt collection.  But for fun you can read up on Personal Jurisdiction.

Can you be arrested returning to the United States for old debt?

I honestly don’t know, but based on what I read on other sites and forums the following is my opinion.

If you had an old judgment the court may have issued a ‘bench warrant’ to force you to show up and explain why you haven’t satisfied the judgment.  If you are returning to the United States can you be arrested by Immigration or police at the airport upon entry?  I found nothing suggesting you would.  You just want to make sure that you don’t do anything that would cause the police or immigration to run your passport or drivers license through their database.  The best general answer I could find on this subject:

The answer depends on where the bench warrant was issued, for what and if the warrant is in the same jurisdiction as the airport and if you are flying international or domestic.

You can be arrested anywhere in the jurisdiction covered by the warrant. If you are trying to leave the country and they run your passport or driver’s license and the warrant comes up the person will certainly be arrested.

I also found nothing to suggest that you could be deported back to the U.S. for a judgment regarding a civil suit for debt collection.  The worse that could happen would be your new country participating in enforcing a judgment against you to repay the debt.  A very unlikely event.  I didn’t find a single source where this enforcement has occurred under these circumstances. Now I’m not assuming that everything I’ve implied here is 100% accurate. I’m only presenting this information based on what I was able to find.

So why do collection agencies call debtors in new countries?

Harassment is a very effective tool.  Intimidation, caused most often by lies and emotional persuasion, convince debtors to pay up… even when there’s no legal reason for them to… and even when they don’t legally or morally owe the debt.  Collection agencies are collecting on debts that were wiped out by bankruptcy or the Statute of Limitations years ago.  They wouldn’t do this unless some people pay up.

If you have further information on this subject or if you believe any information in the above article is incorrect – please let me know by joining the forum or send email to info [at] debtprison [dot] net.

Discuss this article and meet new people at Debt Prison Forums.

Related Articles

* Restrictions on Wage Garnishment for Debt Collection.

* The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act

* Reasons not to file Bankruptcy or Settle Your Debts

* Can you go to jail for not paying your debts?

* How to settle your debts on your own

* How to deal with collection agencies

* Sample Debt Validation Letter

* Information on Credit Card Balance Transfers

* How I Escaped Credit Card Debt

* What You Should Know About Credit Cards

* How to seek bargains for food and clothes

**Disclaimer – Debtprison.net does not administer legal or financial advice. The contents of this website are my opinions on collection agencies and how to deal with them. Nothing on this website should be interpreted as legal advice or council. No opinions on this website should be used to replace the advice of your financial advisor or your legal council.

In research for this article I interviewed my Aunt, whom was a Child Support Enforcement Officer.  Since 1985 she was an Employee of the State of Mississippi  but her position is funded by a Federal Program which insures that parents receiving government aid are financially assisted by the state mandated wage garnishment, of the non custodial parent.  These were time limited positions for child support enforcement.

Polybabydadic

The majority of her time was spent in determining paternity.  This is how it works.  The mother gives a name, or five names (in some cases), and child support enforcement sets off to locate the potential fathers.  Once an address is obtained for these men, a letter is sent instructing them to come to the appropriate location for a paternity test.  Sometimes married men (or their wives), received these letters.  Once in the office the potential father could accept paternal responsibilities.  This was a rare occurrence. Normally the potential father would ‘deny’ that he is the father.

DNA Testing

DNA testing used to require the withdrawing of blood, but more recently ‘swabbing‘ has been used.  The baby, mother, and potential are all swabbed to obtain a sample of their DNA.  The DNA is then sent off to a laboratory and analyzed.  The mothers DNA ‘markers’ are noted and then subtracted from the DNA of the baby.  The remaining DNA should be a match with the real father.

Once Paternity is established, the father’s wages were assessed. There were guidelines for how much a father will pay.  It’s based on a percentage of his income per child.  If the father doesn’t have a job then the judge would set the child support based on a minimum wage job, at 40 hours per week.

Divorces

Mississippi passed a law in the 1990’s (which is often ignored) which states that all divorces involving children must have a child support withholding order.  A form would then be filled out by a Child Support Enforcement Officer and mailed to the employer of the non custodial parent. This was a wage garnishment form designed to help the government insure that babies in Mississippi are being taken care of.  Also, if the custodial parent is on some form of government assistance like Medicaid or Welfare, there is a state law which mandates the withholding order. This one is strictly enforced.

Licenses

Besides not being able to obtain a hunting or fishing license.  You could also be denied a Drivers License when you stand in line for one of these.  My Aunt relayed a story about a certain lawyer that would never pay his child support. The only way they could get him to pay was to threaten to remove his license to practice law. The Child Support Officer could use the same threats with a medical doctor.  The ability to disrupt the lives of the  non custodial parent seems to have no boundaries.

What if you leave the state?

Leaving the state won’t help you avoid paying child support.  You may prolong it, but you can’t avoid it by skipping the state. Thanks to the Uniform Reciprocal Enforcement and Support Act, your arrest warrant for failure to pay child support follows you anywhere in the United States.  For example, one of the arrest warrants my Aunt had issued resulted in a man being arrested in California.  He was driving a tractor trailer loaded with produce. Although this was a routine traffic stop, once the man’s license was entered into the police computer, his warrant for failure to pay child support in Mississippi popped up.  He was arrested and his employer’s produce sat in the hot California sun, spoiling before making it to market.

How you are tracked

The government tracks its citizens thanks to a few interconnected circumstances.  This tracking is made possible by your Social Security Number, which is really how the government sees its citizens.  Using your Social Security Number to obtain employment, results in a W-2 being issued to the I.R.S..  Large companies have to report this information every three months. Smaller companies may only report this information at the end of the year.  Thanks to the Homeland Security Act, this process most likely alerts them as well.  But the end result is that a Child Support Officer knows where you are, and if they’re aggressive, you’ll be arrested.

Time in jail

Time in jail is only pursued if the Child Support Officer has a father or mother who refuses to cooperate.  You won’t go to jail if you are trying to pay your child support (actually paying, not just talking about paying).  Once the Officer feels that they have wasted enough time trying to get you to pay, they have a warrant issued to bring you before a judge.  Sometimes they may just lure you to the court with a subpoena, without mentioning that you’re going to be arrested when you arrive.  My Aunt relayed a heart breaking story of having to place a mother in jail who wouldn’t keep a job and pay her child support.  Since the split with her previous husband this woman had given birth to another child.  Inside the courtroom, the mother was placed in handcuffs and escorted to jail, leaving her one year old behind crying.

Once in jail, you’re stuck there until you get a job.  Now I know this sounds crazy, but my Aunt said that you couldn’t leave jail until you could prove that you had a job.  Normally family members took care of this obligation for their incarcerated loved ones.  The Child Support Officer actually does the legal writing.  They have a lawyer at their assistance that really does nothing more than just sign whatever gets placed in front of their face.  So your life of freedom is really in the hands of the Child Support Officer.

The squeaky wheel gets the oil

My Aunt said she averaged carrying around 800 ‘cases’ at any one time.  Also, she would only make appearances in court once a month.  So she would try and accomplish all she could on that day. She made it very obvious, in our conversation, that the custodial parents who were the most assertive with her, took priority over people who compained little.  So if your Ex loves the idea of harassing you, expect to hear from the Child Support Enforcement Officer often.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, it’s of no consequence for the female to have you in court as often as she’d like.  The judge always makes the man pay the court costs.

Related Articles

* Do we have private property in the USA?

* Can you go to jail for not paying your taxes?

* Can you go to jail for not paying your debts?

* What happens to your debts when you go to prison?

**Disclaimer – Debtprison.net does not administer legal or financial advice. The contents of this website are my opinions on collection agencies and how to deal with them. Nothing on this website should be interpreted as legal advice or council. No opinions on this website should be used to replace the advice of your financial advisor or your legal council.

See also all of my articles on Collection Agencies.

See also DebtPrison related article How to deal with Collection Agencies.

Failing to make payments on debt is not considered a crime in the United States. The U.S. hasn’t utilized a debtor’s prison since the 1850’s. Some countries will still place a debtor in prison for failing to make payments. However, the U.S. government has a vested interest in making debt a desirable circumstance, therefore debt is not criminalized. In order to go to prison you must be convicted of criminal behavior. Laws regarding these issues will vary state to state. See also DebtPrison related article How to settle your debts on your own.

Here are your options with debt you’re defaulting on:

1.  Settle your debt (but you’ll need some cash).

2.  File bankruptcy (an often nightmare).

3.  Ignore it and possibly go to jail for contempt of a court order (very rare).

4.  Start paying it back in full.

5.  Leave the United States

What will most likely happen

It’s always been my understanding that your creditor can take you to civil court and obtain a judgment against you saying that you owe the debt.  Through the judgment the collector can then garnish your wages or even get liens against your assets. But getting to this point of wage garnishment or liens against assets is time consuming and usually never occurs.  That’s because the collector has to go through a process that I’ll explain later in the article. 

Going to jail for contempt wasn’t something that I thought could occur, but then I’ve read some comments from my readers below.  I’m assuming there’s more to the cases than just the average default. It seems that in some rare cases an arrest warrant can be issued for contempt of court.  I think this is somehow related to your not showing up in court, but from what I’ve read these arrest warrants are very uncommon. 

This was stated by Sherri below in the comments “They tried to take me to court in 2000 ish. I tried to set up a payment plan and the guy told me he would not allow a payment plan and wanted me to ask friends and family to pay the bill. This week I got a letter in from the sheriffs dept stating it was a warrant for arrest. The attached paperwork was showing a court date for 12/20/07. In which I NEVER received any paperwork stating I had a court date in Dec.”

And this was stated by Deb “I owe around 3,000 in credit debt, and a sheriff keeps banging on my door leaving me a note from the sheriffs dept, what the hell is this all about? And can they arrest me in my own home?”

I have no way of knowing specifically what occurred in the two above mentioned cases that led to the Sheriff’s Dept. getting involved.  In general, the negative outcomes (negative credit reporting, wage garnishment, liens, or jail) often depends on the amount of money involved and the aggressiveness of the creditor.  The more money involved (almost always in excess of $1,000) the more likely the creditor or collection agency will pursue legal action. 

Usually the process follows these guidelines:

You have defaulted on your payments.  Your creditors collection division calls you daily to try and talk you into making a payment.  After a year or two they give up on the phone calls and letters.  They can’t get you to pay so they (this could now be a collection agency, not the original creditor) sue you in civil court.  This can happen even if you are in a debt settlement program.  It’s a lot of trouble and expense for them to sue you, so normally they won’t bother unless they figure they can get some money out of you.

Keep in mind that there are rules that collection agencies must follow according to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.  If they don’t follow the rules you can actually hire an attorney and file suit against them!  For example, if they have your phone number, they are not allowed to call your family, friends, or employer (if you request them not to).  Also, you can write a cease and desist letter which instructs them to only communicate with you via U.S. snail mail.

Scenario 1 – You don’t show up and the judge rules in favor of the creditor and against you.  This judgment is an acknowledgement that you owe the money.  I’ve read that 80% to 90% of judgments are never collected!  This is because the judgment is usually just an acknowledgement that you owe the money, and that is all.  In order to collect another court date must be assigned to perform a ‘writ of execution’.  If they summons you for this, and you don’t appear, they may issue a bench warrant for your arrest.

A writ of execution is a common court order granted by a court in an attempt to satisfy a judgment obtained by a plaintiff. When issuing a writ of execution, a court typically will order a sheriff or other similar official to levy property owned by a judgment debtor. Such property will often then be sold in a sheriff’s sale, and the proceeds remunerated to the plaintiff in partial or full satisfaction of the judgment. It is generally considered preferable for the sheriff simply to confiscate money from the defendant’s bank account. If the judgment debtor owns real property, the judgment creditor can record the execution to “freeze” the title until the execution is satisfied.

If you don’t show up for this one you may be arrested for contempt of court.  This is the part of the process where the facts will be laid out.  This is the part where they get your employment information for wage garnishment or asset info for liens.  But bear in mind, most collections will not get to this point.  It really just depends on how aggressive they are on your particular case.  And many people are actually in a position where they cannot be collected on.  Perhaps you are disabled and on limited income.  Chances are they can get a judgment but will never be able to collect.  There is also a federal minimum (I think this figure is 30 hours of minimum wage pay per week), which if you make below, they cannot collect.  For example, if minimum wage is $5.80 per hour, times 30 hours, comes to $174/week or $702 per month.  If you make that or less they cannot touch you.  Money that is in IRA’s, custodial accounts, trusts, annuities, and insurance contracts are often untouchable.  See also, Restrictions on Wage Garnishment for Debt Collection.

Scenario 2 – You go to defend yourself against the creditor.  You explain why you do not owe the money.  Or you explain that you owe the money and cannot pay it because of personal circumstances.  The judge may or may not rule in favor of the creditor.  If you don’t owe the money or really can’t pay – just walk into court and defend yourself, you’ll be glad you did.

Please understand that the garnishment of wages depends on many factors such as: your level of income, possibly your spouses income may be considered, and the number of dependents you have.  To read about someone’s personal experience in using debt settlement companies read Tell Debt Settlement Companies to Kiss Your Ass.  If this article doesn’t convince you to stay away from these companies, I don’t know what will.

Can you be arrested at airport returning to U.S.?

I’ve seen this question come up quite often.  Some people moved away from the United States into another country.  However, they left behind tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars of debt.  Now they need to re-enter the U.S. for a vacation or to visit family.  They are worried about an outstanding arrest warrant related to the debt.    If you are concerned about this possibility try performing an information search on yourself at a site like this one.  Perhaps avoiding entering the state where you used to live would be a good idea.  Now if you have a warrant for fraud (related to your debt) the possibility for arrest may carry a bit more weight since this is a criminal, not civil arrest warrant.  Keep reading to learn more about fraud and other issues related to debt and jail.  See also, DebtPrison related article Can you leave the U.S. to avoid paying your debt.

Fraud

Also, if you obtained debt by committing fraud you can go to jail. For example, let’s say you just moved into a new apartment. Mail for the previous tenant is still arriving at your apartment. A credit card offer comes in the mail for the previous tenant. You fill out the application, mail it in, and start using this new credit card which is in someone else’s name. This is fraud and if convicted you could serve time in prison. This happened to my cousin. He moved out of his apartment and the following tenant received his mail and ran up thousands of dollars in retail charges. He had to get a lawyer involved and it took years to get this completely removed from his credit report.

Perhaps you have ‘borrowed’ your sister’s credit card to go out and spend a couple of grand without her knowing about it. In this case you could be fined and or imprisoned for fraud. This type of conduct is also considered criminal in nature.

You could possibly be looking at prison if you ran up thousands of dollars of debt on credit cards with no intention of paying it back. Recently the federal government changed the law regarding filing bankruptcy on credit card debt. The new law makes it harder to erase the debts you owe to credit card companies. Before this law went into effect, bankruptcy courts received a record number of new filings. Broke Americans were all trying to file for bankruptcy before the new law kicked in.

At the time I had an acquaintance that had in fact, filed bankruptcy on debts to various creditors, worth over $60,000. We were discussing the new law and he suggested that I run up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. When the bills came due I would simply file bankruptcy before the new law took effect. Many people did exactly that. If the credit card company can prove that this was your intention, then some judges would find you guilty of fraud – taking out loans that you had no intention of repaying. However, it is usually difficult to prove that someone had no intention of repaying the debt. For example, if you applied for six credit cards, maxed out the limits for a total of $15,000, and then never made a payment, you could be in serious trouble. It would be obvious that your intent was criminal.

In general if it can be proved you received money or goods by deceptive practices you may be eligible for a criminal conviction.

You could also be imprisoned for the following:

If you violate a court order (a judgment against you to pay child support).

If you are convicted of willfully failing to pay your income tax to the government.

If you are attempting to hide assets or income to avoid paying a debt for which there is a judgment against you.

Bankruptcy related acts that can result in criminal penalties include:

If you defraud tenants

If you forge a bankruptcy judges signature

If you commit perjury during the creditor’s meeting

Keep in mind that there is a difference in a judgment (civil court decision about money you owe another party), and a verdict (criminal court conviction of a crime). In a civil court case the outcome will largely depend on the judge and his interpretation of the circumstances.

Simply defaulting on your debt is not a crime

If failing to pay your debts equaled prison time then half the people you know would be in jail. Even the author of this article, although my debt is caught up now and will be soon be paid off in full. Many people have lost their jobs or had unexpected medical issues force serious changes to their financial lifestyle. Through no fault of their own a debtor may no longer be able to make the minimum payments. This is not a crime and one cannot go to jail for these reasons. Like I said earlier, collection agencies will do anything they can to convince you to send them a payment. If you have credit card debts or medical bills that you can no longer pay, you can’t go to jail. This is why we have debt settlement, bankruptcy, and ruined credit scores.

Although you can’t go to jail for failing to pay your debts, there is a list of negative consequences you may be eligible for;

Collection Agencies can call your phone several times a day.

They can even call your place of employment, asking for you or where they can find you.

They can call your neighbors and ask them if they know where you are.

They can sue you in civil court for the balance of debt you owe them.

They can win a judgment in civil court against you for the debt owed.

Through the judgment they can garnish wages from your paycheck.

Through the judgment they can garnish your banking accounts.

They can (in some states) get a lien against your assets (house) and sell it to pay off the debt.

They can report the collection information to credit bureaus which lowers one’s credit score.

So the short answer is no – you can’t go to jail for simply not paying your debts, unless you are in contempt of court (very rare). But, creditors and collection agencies can make your life a living hell. So it’s in your best interest to get this situation handled in a manner that benefits you.

Remember that some debt collectors will scare you anyway they can to force you to pay up. The best advice I can give is to educate yourself about your options. Take the time to read information across the web about debt and collection. There are a lot of articles out there – most of them are accurate and truthful. Please feel free to leave questions or testimonials at the forum. Go forth and be debt free!

Discuss this article, share ideas, and meet new people at Debt Prison Forums.

Related Articles

*  Restrictions on Wage Garnishment for Debt Collection

* The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act

* Get Everything in Writing: Collection Agencies and Their Lies

* Reasons not to file Bankruptcy or Settle Your Debts

* Can you go to jail for not paying your debts?

* How to settle your debts on your own

* How to deal with collection agencies

* Sample Debt Validation Letter

* Will Debt Follow You Abroad?

* Information on Credit Card Balance Transfers

* How I Escaped Credit Card Debt

* What You Should Know About Credit Cards

* How to seek bargains for food and clothes