settling with collection agencies
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Posted by expat
(82.32.8.215) on January 28, 2004 at 09:02:49:
My husband was mostly umemployed last year and is now a grad student overseas. We had a huge amount of credit card debt we couldn't pay off from medical bills and living expenses while unemployed. In the midst of the his mess, my husband got an offer to come to a university overseas and we decided to do it, so he could try to retrain and become more employable. His tuition is paid and he has a small stipend--about 15K. We contacted a bankruptcy attorney before we left the U.S.. He suggested doing nothing and not declaring bankruptcy. My family offered to lend us the funds to settle our debts and I got the smaller accounts (those less than 10K) to come all the way down to 30%. But, the biggest, an MBNA loan of 25K refused to settle. If I couldn't get them all to settle, I didn't to settle with any of them, so we just left it all hanging. Fast forward.. We've been gone now about 6 months and I just now got our forwarded mail from the U.S. MBNA had offered to settle for less than 30%, but we didn't see the letter in time and they sold it to a collection agency... I feel sick. We had perfect credit for 21 yrs before all this happened and hate this hanging over us. I tried calling MBNA, but they said they'd sold the account and can't get it back. I would like to borrow the money from my folks and settle all of our debt. If it's all been sold to collection agencies, is there anyway that we can settle for 30% or less with them? We can't possibly borrow anymore money from my folks than that. Will the collection agencies come after us if we're outside the U.S.? I have no experience with this process, and want to try to figure out how to get this all settled, so we can start repairing our credit and move on. Thanks for any help or advice.
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