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statute of limitations

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rmcnellis

Member
What is the name of your state? montana
i am wondering if there is a statute of limitations on collections. my husband had a major credit card several years ago. he charged about $1800.00 on it and did not pay the bill. he travelled for his job alot then and had no permanent address except for his dad's house. when the membership on the card expired in 1998 and the bill was not paid, the creditor sent the bill off to collection (we just found out). my husband by that time had moved in with his dad and was receiving his mail. the collection agency never sent him anything on the debt and it has never gone to judgement. of course my husband knew he owed the money to the credit card company, but forgot about it as time went by because he never heard a word - bills from the credit card place just quit coming. anyway, three days ago we received a statement from the collection agency (where, coincidentally my husband has another collection against him that he HAS been paying on for about 2 years) regarding this now $2800.00 collection. When he called them and asked about it, they said they had sent him a letter in 1998 to his dad's address - the only problem is they had the street address right, but had the city wrong. The statements never reached him until now - even though they had been sending us statements on another collection! he would have been paying on this collection too had he known where to sned the money. now, they want to settle with us - which is good - but they want the $1800.00 RIGHT NOW or they say they will get a judgement. Frankly, I don't have that kind of money laying around and I'm pretty mad that they're being so difficult when this could've been taken care of a long time ago if only they had a brain. thanks for your thoughts.
 


bigun

Senior Member
You're close. According to www.creditinfocenter.com the SOL in Mt.is 5 years. A credit card is an open account. It's important to know when he first went deliquent. Does he have any statements showing a late charge assessed? DO you have a credit report showing a charge off date? If so, the date he first went late would be 180 days before charge off.
 

Ladynred

Senior Member
A CA - have a brain ??? Their about a dumb as a bag of hammers !!!

If you find that charge-off or last activity date and its nearly but not quite past the SOL, I would suggest you try stalling the CA with debt validation - they have to prove it w/o a doubt or they have to cease collections. After 5 years, I'd be willing to bet they can't come up with proper validation. This would stall them for a while - maybe long enough for the SOL to expire. Of course, I wouldn't mention SOL to any collector - they'll just get nasty or scream like harpies.
 

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