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By: Ikedi Ani-okoye
When you are in debt to one or more credit card companies and are wondering when they can sue you, the sad news is that they can indeed. As can anyone that you legitimately owe money to. However, the fact that they can sue you performs not necessarily mean that they will wish to. That decision depends on many factors. What they are interested in is getting their money backward from you, or as much of it as they possibly can. They will choose the course of action that they think is going to get them the best result.
When they are deciding whether to sue you for the debt or not, they will weigh up things like how much you owe, whether you are working, how long you have lived in your current home, how old you are and how much it will price them to go to court to sue you.
They look at these things because they will aid them to build up a picture of how capable you are of paying back the money, or how believably you are to do a runner. Someone who has a job and has been in the same house for some years is far less likely to disappear than someone unemployed who has moved roughly a lot. Similarly, if the info suggests that you plausibly do have enough money to pay and are just choosing not to, they are quite believably to sue you.
The chances are that if there is a joint cardholder on the card you owe money on, the credit card company are highly plausibly to try pursuing that person before resorting to legal action. This is since it is easier and cheaper than legal action, so is worth their though trying first.
Can A Credit Card Company Sue You:
Suing For Debt in The UK
The details of legal processes obviously vary from country to country, so the advice in this article relates specifically to the UK. The general process of being sued for debt in the US is very similar. if you receive a Default Notice from the credit card company, the first thing you want to do is take proper legal advice. Such a notice means that the company can take you to court to sue you. It is possible at this level to apply for something called a Time Order, which can stop the interest and penalties being added to your debt until the court action is over. It may even result in setting a lower amount for your repayments.
Before you apply for a Time prescribes you should approach the credit card company with an offer of defrayment. It is advisable to include a personal financial statement which shows your exact situation and demonstrates how the amount you are offering to pay really is all you can afford. If the credit card company turn down your offer, that is when you should approach the court to get a Time Order, and the court will make a decision about how reasonable your repayment offer was.
Another alternative whenever the credit card company refuse your offer of defrayment is to just make the payments you have offered anyway. when you do this, it is then up to the credit card company to decide whether to take you to court. When they do decide to sue you, this is whenever you apply for a Time prescribes. The difference being that it will then be the credit card company who has to pay the court fee.
The name of the mechanism used by the credit card company to sue you for money owed is a Money Only Claim and the company will do this through the County Court. Whenever the credit card company do decide to sue you, you will receive a form from the court, which you require to complete and return. At this stage you really should take legal advice.
When this process is successful and the court upholds the credit card company’s case, the result will be a County Court Judgement against you. What a County Court Judgement actually means is that the court will look at your finances and put a plan in place for you to repay your debt. They will decide how much you can afford and will set your defrayment amounts. In theory this should not be set at a level you really cannot afford.
Can A Credit Card Company Sue You:
Make Sue You Comply With the Judgement
Once the court has produced a judgement against you and ordered you to pay a certain amount rearward each month, it really is significant that you stick to this order, because whenever you do not, the consequences can get a whole lot more serious. Defaulting on the payment plan set by the court can mean that the credit card company are then allowed to use bailiffs to take your assets and sell them to pay off your debt.
Other possible nasty consequences are further court action to make an Attachment of Earnings, meaning that money is taken directly from your salary. Failure to comply with this order gets more serious again, and includes possibly being sent to prison.
It is worth mentioning another situation that you could detect yourself in if you fail to keep up payments. A Charging prescribe efficaciously turns the debt into a secured debt, meaning that it is tied to your home, so when you do not keep to the repayment schedule your house can then be sold off to pay the debt.
Can A Credit Card Company Sue You:
Final Thoughts
The initial process and consequence of having a credit card company sue you for debt are not actually too horrific. The trick is to avert chartering things get that bad to start with, and if it is too late to obviate that, be absolutely sure that you do not default on the payments set by the court.
There is practically no debt problem that you cannot deal with yourself with the right advice. Trading with debt definitely performs not mean borrowing more money or spending money to pay someone else to deal with your problem. The real long term solution is always the same – make sure you let your creditors know your situation, prioritise your debts, interpret your exact financial situation and negotiate with your creditors to pay off the debts at a rate you can actually afford.
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