Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in New Jersey

information for credit card application

I was on an academic fellowship in the

late 1990's. When I was sent a

solicitation for credit at the end of

graduate school, I accepted. I listed the

school that paid the fellowship as my

employer, because that was who issued

the checks. And I forecasted my annual

income at a minimum reasonable

expectation of 30 thousand dollars,

because I was about to graduate, even

though the fellowship was only half

that. Two years later I was forced to

declare bankruptcy. I did have a couple

of jobs that paid about the amount I

had forecasted, but I wasn't able to

keep them. And my plans to sell

creative work (it was a writer's program)

did not materialize. It seemed

reasonable at the time to fill out the

application that way. But now I'm really

bothered by it. Was it fraudulent? Is it

common for people with unpredictable

income streams to use forecasting when

reporting their annual income on a

credit card application? And do people

often list issuers of long term

scholarships or fellowships (this was a

fixed income for three years) as

employers? I graduated in 2000, and my

debt was over twenty thousand dollars

when it was discharged in the

bankruptcy court of New Jersey in 2002.

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