Financial Challenges Support Group
This community is for people who are struggling to meet financial obligations of any kind. Financial challenges include everything from the day-to-day challenges of making ends meet to managing credit card debt to bankruptcy. Get support from others who are going through similar obstacles on the road back to financial stability.
Well I got my 2nd small claims suit filed against me this week for the outstanding medical bills I have. It is so frustrating to know that I will now have two judgments against my credit! UGH - I wish I could have prevented them, but the cash flow just isn't there. I guess I don't know what happens next - wage garnishments? I did set up payments on both, so I hope it doesn't come to that. :-(
As an alcoholic, I lost everything except my word. To this day, I value my word. If I say something I mean it and will do it. I would set up payments with a creditor and within three or four months they were taking me to court. It really upset me.
Sadly, there was nothing I could do. They now had total control over me. They could ask for more money out of me and sometimes they would get it.
For me though, it got to the point that I swallowed my pride and told them to go ahead and garnish my wages. The damage was already done to my credit, having my wages garnished didn't change a thing.
In fact, if you tell a creditor to do that some of the time they will work with you. Usually because what you are sending them as payments is more then what they would get through garnishment.
And the one thing with garnishment that is "good" is that your wages can only be garnished by one creditor at a time... so that second claim can't do much until the first one is paid.
The scary part with claims? This happened to me once and scared the bejesus out of me. One creditor set up all the legal proceedings to have a sheriff's sale of my possessions. That was the only time I truly was scared of a creditor. The way I worked it with them was sending a dozen post dated checks over a six month time and they accepted that...
I wish you luck with it... I don't have any great advice for you... I just have been there and hated it very much because I was being honest with them yet they didn't give me the same courtesy
For me, it was usually with a hospital... they are happy to accept monthly payments but after a year they want to be paid in full and will take a person to court no matter how good they are doing with monthly payments...
Like I said, it has happened to me more then once...