Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in New York

Re: Confidentiality

It would generally be ILLEGAL under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act for the debt collector to tell your mother details about the debt ALTHOUGH the debt collector is legally allowed to contact your mother or other third parties for the purpose of LOCATING you and for other exceptional circumstances which I will specify below.

In fact, a debt collector can sometimes be SUED for damages (e.g., for emotional distress), for illegally communicating details about a debt to a third party.

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) which is section 1692 of Title 15 of the U.S. code (15 USC 1692), which is U.S. federal law, provides as follows in FDCPA Section 805 (15 USC 1692c) (COMMUNICATION IN CONNECTION WITH DEBT COLLECTION)in FDCPA 805(b) (15 USC 1692c(b)) (COMMUNICATION WITH THIRD PARTIES): With the EXCEPTION of communicating SOLELY to find out your LOCATION (as allowed in FDCPA section 804), (and witn other exceptional circumstances which I will describe at the end of this answer), the debt collector is NOT allowed to speak to your mother because your mother is not included in the list below:

WITHOUT the prior CONSENT of you, the debtor, a debt collector may NOT communicate with ANY person OTHER than the debtor, or his/her attorney, or "a consumer reporting agency if otherwise permitted by law",or the creditor, or the creditor's attorney, or the debt collector's attorney.

Section 804 of FDCPA does allow the debt collector to communicate with third parties other than those listed above in order to LOCATE the debtor, (NOT to verify employment), but even then, the debt collector "shall NOT state that such consumer owes any debt." (FDCPA Section 804(2))

Note ALSO that there is ANOTHER exception written into this law, where the debt collector can communicate with third parties not on this list without your consent if it is "reasonably necessary to effectuate a post judgment judicial remedy", e.g., debt collector communicating with the creditor's employer for garnishment of wages in accordance with court's judgment.

However, my preliminary research indicates that consumers have brought substantial lawsuits against debt collectors under FDCPA SECTION 813(asking for damages in the thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars), where the debtor SUES the debt collection agency for, among other complaints, the debtor's emotional distress, due to embarrassment, etc., caused by the debt collector's ILLEGALLY disclosing the debt to debtor's employer.

Note also that the law firm in this case may also have violated applicable state laws in addition to violating the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.