Question:
Due to some health problems preventing me from gainful employment, I have
about $8000 debt in medical bills and credit cards that I have not paid any
money towards for about 16 months. Obviously, I have been receiving
numerous threatening letters from various collection agencies on a weekly
basis. Normally I would file personal bankruptcy to discharge this debt but
I already filed Chapter 7 in 2000 and I cant think about filing again until
2007.
I have been offered an employment position recently only for a 6-month
period, but possibly longer.
My question is this......will these collection agencies immediately detect
that I will be employed once I submit my social security number to my
employer and start receiving paychecks? I dont care about judgment liens
against my personal property since I dont own anything of real value, but I
do not want my wages garnished at all since I will need every cent for rent
and living expenses. Unfortunately, I will employed in a state where wages
can be garnished up to 25% of net pay and this will be too much of a penalty
for me.
Does the speed of detection depend on the particular collection agency, or
do they all have access to a master database that will instantly inform them
that I have employment?
Answer:
Until, perhaps, Messrs. Ashcroft and Bush et al. and those for whom
they front get their way, in their apparent desire and on-going
efforts to create and to implement a national database of the sort to
which you refer, it is still primarily the former (particular
collection agency self-created interest and dilligence) rather than
the latter.
Even so, however, it is also at least theoretcially conceivable that
your prospective employer's own manner of doing (if it does) a
credit/background check might generate interest within a particular
credit verification/collection agency (e.g., if its such inquiry to
the background-check dept. of the agency with which it deals results
in some sort of internal "flagging" in that enterprise's collection
dept.) -- yet even in that (likely? unlikely?) eventuality, you
appear to be indulging in three not evidently fully examined but
perhaps fallacious assumptions:
1) that (even if) "instant" detection/knowledge necessarily will
result in also (more or less) instantaneous garnishment, although it
can take (sometimes: notably) upwards of 6-months to obtain and
perfect to the point of enforceability an even otherwise more or less
uncontested judgment, and
2) (while I recognize this alternative is distasteful to you),
it is possible, once you are employed, that (if you act credibly) you
will be able to negotiate some sort of installment payment settlement
at less than the 25% aggregate level you say would cause great
difficulty for you to live with, and
3) whether or not you could achieve a reduced cash-flow payment
percentage by agreement, depending where you reside and are employed
(you don't say explicitly), you have not yet said whether you've
verified that the 25% deductibility sum in your state is abolute or
itself subject to court-granted modification and, if so, on what
grounds that may be available to you (e.g., as the result of a motion
made in/by which you will have demonstrated severe health-related
hardship warranting deduction of a lesser-than-25% sum?).
