If I Stop Paying My Credit Card Debt, What Happens?

If you decide you should file for bankruptcy, stop making payments on your credit cards. This is one of the things I advise my clients to do when they hire me as their Orlando bankruptcy lawyer. Just the other day, before I could offer up this advice, a client inquired, "What will happen when if I don't make credit card payments?"

Once you stop making credit card payments, the collection process will start. Collections normally progress as follows:

1. Non-stop, for about 60-90 days, the original creditor will call. They will call you, your family, your job. All in an attempt to get you to make some type of payment over the phone. They will threaten to ruin your life, at least financially, if you do not pay them.

2. In about 90 days, your original creditor will give up and sell your account to a debt collector. This third party agency will then repeat the actions above.

3. After about 180 days since you stopped paying, you may get a call from an attorney trying to collect on the debt who will repeat the actions listed in 1 and 2 above.

4. The attorney may eventually file a lawsuit against you, in an attempt to get a judgment, which the creditor could collect on. Your wages may only be garnished after a judgment has been entered.

Kind of a long process until a judgment is obtained, right? Over 6 months from the time payments stopped being made if I added correctly. So why, as a bankruptcy lawyer, do I advise my clients to stop paying on credit cards when they hire me?

The reason is simple. The intent is for my client to have their bankruptcy filed long before that judgment is obtained. Therefore, no possible garnishment. With the money they have saved by not making payments to a those rude and obnoxious debt collectors, my clients are able to catch up on car payments or house payments for secured debt they want to keep through filing bankruptcy. Additionally, they can begin to build the safety net. This is a strategy I recommend as their Orlando bankruptcy lawyer, to help them in getting the most out of the fresh start filing bankruptcy can provide.

But what about those malicious debt collection agents? Here in Florida, we have some of the toughest laws in the country to protect consumers from the abuses collectors use regularly when attempting to get my clients to pay their credit card debts. Additionally, a Federal Law also restricts those abusive acts by third party collection agents in an attempt to collect on a debt. Why not sue your creditors to enforce your rights?

Collection agents and the whole debt collection process can be an intimidating one. Don't let it be! As long as you know your rights and how the system works, the empty threats thrown at you on a call from a debt collector will seem as foolish and absurd as they really are; and in most cases actionable in court.