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Wolpoff&Abramson-Advice Please on Arbitration, etc.
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Posted by Ellie
(68.4.118.129) on May 23, 2004 at 18:46:18:
I posted this yesterday, but the board archived, so I am reposting it. Thanks for any advice anyone can give me. I just got a letter from Wolpoff & Abramson (WONDERFUL people, phft) that said, "as you know, our clients (MBNA/Visa) have filed an Arbitration proceeding against you". Wolpoff & Abramson say they are "giving me a chance to resolve the matter and avoid proceeding to an arbitration review which the award against me may be enforced in a state court under applicable law". Of course all of this will be tacked on to my balance. At first I thought that this was just another collector trying to scare me and I was going to ignore it, but now that I read this board I am starting to wonder if I should pay attention and do something. Here is my situation. We are in CA (which is a community property state). I have a huge balance on this card, in the double digits, and they have added $5K in finance charges and whatever other charges in just over a year. I was forced to stop paying just over a year ago when my medical problems became bad enough that I couldn't work and I was just paying minimum payments and we were barely able to put food on the table. My spouse has to work two jobs and we still barely scrape by, paycheck to paycheck. I don't own any property, have no assets, and have no savings account. My spouse and I have a joint checking acct., but there isn't more in there than enough to pay the monthly bills. I didn't earn any of this money, but my NAME is on the acct., so I guess they wouldn't care (they would take it). We should probably close the existing one and open another one in his name only I suppose? The credit card was never a joint account, it was in my name only. At one time I had an extra card for him, but it was always only under my name. The creditors are calling me at least 5-10 times a day; I never answer the phone though. I have caller i.d. and let the answering machine get it. Sometimes they leave messages, but usually they just hang up. My questions are: 1. Can I refuse arbitration? Should I? Or is there no point? If I refused and then sent them a letter telling them that I have no assets, maybe they won't sue me? HA HA :) From reading this board it sounds like they are pretty ruthless. But you can't squeeze blood from a stone. If the money isn't there, how can they force you to pay??
2. Would filing for bankruptcy be a good idea? I have some other debts (one of them being a voluntary repossession of a car which I couldn't pay on anymore, so I called them to pick it up) that I think I may get sued for. I haven't heard ANYTHING from them in MONTHS and it has been just over a year since it happened, but I can't imagine that they would let it go seeing as they say that I owe them like
20K (!!) RIDICULOUS since they sold the car.
3. Can they garnish my spouse's wages even though all the debt is in my name, considering that CA is a community property state? We couldn't pay rent, utilities and feed our kids if they did that! I know this is extremely long, so thank you first for getting to the end of this and secondly thank you so much for any advice!
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