Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Massachusetts

Re: Collect amount owed on Promissory note

Various steps to take:

a) Keep in touch with the debtor; find out when the next

payment will be coming, what the problem is, if you need to

change the schedule for repayment, etc. Compromise, even,

is almost always worthwhile in spite of what it may do to your

pride. The other routes, unfortunately, are less effective,

to be perfectly honest.

b) Hire a "leg-breaker" -- a collections lawyer. (Don't

actually hire a leg-breaker, please!) I'm such a person --

a lawyer who handles collections, that is. To be frank, though,

the first thing I will do is see if we can improve the

communications with the debtor and get a voluntary continuation

of payments; sometimes having another person to talk to (and it need

not even be a lawyer) helps grease the wheel and get it turning

again.

If that / those step(s) will or have failed, then go onto c):

c) Find out what assets debtor has; there are various methods

that we do this. Lawyers have detective bureaus on call who can

do some asset searches relatively cheaply and suprisingly effectively.

d) Put a lien on such assets just to secure them for possible use

to satisfy a judgment, then file the suit to get the judgment.

One possible asset is a regular wage / salary, though not my favorite.

Getting that money is called garnishing the wages.

If you get the judgment, you can also call the party in for a show-cause

hearing to answer why he hasn't satisfied the judgment and to explain what

he has that can be applied and how he plans to satisfy the judgment. You can

have a person civilly arrested by surprise if they just don't come to such

a hearing.

Please send me a copy of the note to my street address or else by fax to (617) 527-1763;

often the note limits or expands your rights, for one thing. Let me know also how much

you are owed currently.

Re: Collect amount owed on Promissory note

I noticed I haven't heard from you ... how come?