Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Wisconsin
colecting a debt
The daycare provider for my daughter sent me a letter in at the end of April stating that my child care would end on May 5, if I did not have a current authorization for child care from the State of Wisconsin. Today, I was sent a threatening letter stating that there was a balance due and if I did not make a payment and payment arrangements by friday August 25, that I judgement would be filed for the amount due. To the best of my knowledge there was no indication that a balance was due when the leter was sent to me from the center. Do I have any recourse, since I am not sure I even owe that amount. Isnt this unfair collection practices since this is the first that I have heard about this outstanding balance?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: colecting a debt
You have many rights against a creditor
as a debtor undergoing collection, under
both state and federal law. Many of the
remedies include actual reasonable attorney
fees for violations, and even punitive damages
against the creditor. The bottem line,
however, is that the court system is just
too cumbersome and expensive to make their
use practical when small amounts are at stake, to say
nothing of the fact that you could always spend a
ton of money litigating such a dispute and end up losing.
A far more practical remedy for consumers is a
chapter 7 bankruptcy, which is pretty much of a sure thing
for most unsecured debts, and which costs far less
than litigating consumer act violations. Another
benefit of chapter 7 is that it deals with all your
creditors in one stroke and for far less money than
the cost of dealing properly with any one of them individually.
I'd be more than happy to send you some free reading
material on your rights if you wanted to give me either a snail mail
or an e-mail address. Send a private e-mail or call if you are
interested. Law Guru also has some of these same
materials and might be posting them soon.