Are You Getting Sued for Debt? Seniors Don't Have to go to Court

hi i'm jeff hoyt editor-in-chief of seniorliving.org seniors having trouble keeping up with their bills may feel harassed by debt collectors but the thought of being sued and dragged into court for a lawsuit of our unpaid debts fills them with fear but attorney eric olsen says fear not the founder of the help's non-profit law firm which serves senior citizens veterans and disabled persons struggling with debt details why you don't even have to go to court of your suit for debts the lawyer explains that most creditors don't sue seniors why you don't have to go to court how your income and bank account are protected the rare circumstances when you must appear in court over unpaid debt and how his firm can help bring you peace of mind as eric is in salem oregon and i'm in los angeles we'll be conducting the interview online via zoom [Music] hi it's jeff hoyt editor-in-chief of seniorliving.org and today once again i have the pleasure of speaking with attorney eric olsen eric is the executive director of the helps non-profit law firm it's a nationwide law firm and it helps seniors and others who are struggling with debt welcome eric glad to be here jeff well thanks for taking the time so a lot of seniors are having problems with debt paying off credit cards car payments what have you they fall behind uh eventually there could be a knock on the door and someone serves them with legal papers that says hey we're suing you for non-payment of a debt so do they really have to show up in court getting sued is a big fear for seniors they're just scared of it a lot of them it's never happened in their life and the idea of someone knocking on the door and giving you some legal papers is just terrifying and probably they're not going to need to go to court for a lot of different reasons uh i'll explain why um if a senior owes the money okay if it's a credit card debt and you ran up the bill and you owe the money and you've been sued um the only way only reason you would defend yourself uh on the lawsuit is if for some reason you don't owe the money okay the court doesn't care why you can't pay it all they care is whether or not you owe the money or not now where a lot of seniors get confused and think they have to go to court is the paperwork might say you have a specific date and time that they're supposed to be in court anything oh no i have to be in court on uh june 15th at 10 a.m okay or july whatever it is and they think oh no but if they if they read the papers carefully what that says is if you're going to defend the lawsuit that's when the court is that's when the court date is set for if you're not going to defend the lawsuit then no you don't need to go to court it's absolutely unnecessary um but it's easy to get confused if the summons paper says you're supposed to be at court a certain date and time but if they read it carefully they'll realize that's only if they're going to fight the lawsuit or defend it and for a lot of seniors if they owe the money there's no need to do that we know that if somebody's wanted in court for a crime to face charges that if they don't show up somebody may be looking for them police could be out looking for them and they could get dragged to court but that's a criminal matter this we're talking about as a civil matter and you're saying there's no they're not breaking the law if they don't show up no they're not breaking the law at all um they've been sued by someone who says that they owe the money and if they owe the money uh if they don't file an answer if they don't respond then then the other side wins by default okay it's called a default judgment um but if a senior owes the money you know if they go to court and they owe the money they're probably just a lot they might just embarrass themselves because if they don't have a defense everyone's going to wonder what are you here for depending on where they live the person who's serving them with the papers who's handing them the paperwork the summons may actually be in uniform is that correct which makes it even scarier when a lawsuit is served on someone okay there's it it's either served by a civil deputy for the sheriff's department every county has a civil section for the sheriff's office they might have a specific deputy is assigned to serve legal papers and so if someone files in a lawsuit they'll deliver the summons and the complaint to the to the sheriff's deputy to the sheriff's office and that sheriff's deputy will go out and serve the legal papers he'll have a uniform on with a badge and everything but his job it's not a criminal thing his job is to serve legal papers as a convenience for for you know society and for the court system by the same token there are process services who serve papers privately they're they're not authorized by the court but they but they but they can legally serve papers and they're just citizens that serve legal papers there's process serving companies everywhere in the country that do that so to be clear if you're being sued for non-payment of a debt whether it's credit card or car loan or um other monies owed you're not gonna get in trouble if you don't show up you're basically not putting up a defense you're saying yeah i do owe the money yeah yeah you're not breaking the law and if you if they get a judgment they're gonna get a judgment and we can talk why that's for a lot of first mostly for seniors why that's no big deal how their income is protected and their other assets are safe um but yeah they don't have to go to court so why are the incomes of seniors and some of their assets protected social security pensions disability va benefits retirement income almost all forms of retirement income social security definitely in all forms of pensions are protected uh from garnishment by debt collectors in the event of a judgment okay there's pensions are protected under a federal law pact passed in 1974 called erisa and employment return retirement income security act and then social security laws protect social security and then there's law there's laws that pick in the state to protect disability income and then there's federal laws that protect va income so for most seniors all their forms of income is protected if someone were to get a judgment against them no one could garnish that money from them and then the law also provides since about 2012 that twice the amount of federal benefits deposited into a bank account is protected automatically from garnishment no matter what monies are in there twice the amount of monthly benefits deposited into a bank account that sums protected automatically from garnishment matter what monies are in there where they came from so if you've got fifteen hundred dollars in social security each month three thousand in the account is protected even if you had something you sold on ebay a gift from a family member no matter where the other money came if they got a rid of garnishment if someone had a default judgment against them if the bank got rid of garnishment they would um they look at where the money came from and they have a code for doing that they have a department in the bank that does that they see the money came from a federal source like social security or a veterans pension or disability income from for a veteran they take that number times two that amount is automatically protected the bank disregards where the money that's in the account at that time actually came from all they all they worry about is how much does this guy get each month from a federal source i times that times two that amount is protected now if a senior had more than that in the bank account that access could be held up but only temporarily the senior could file what's called a challenge of garnishment or claim of exemption to have the balance released that doesn't that's not necessary very often because a lot of times seniors won't get sued but if they do uh they can we help seniors do that when that happens but yeah it's it's not to worry their excess money is going to be protected also using your example of someone making 1500 a month in social security if they have less than 3 dollars in the bank account it can't be touched even if someone goes to court and they don't show up they get a judgment against them that money cannot be touched yeah exactly that's right can't be touched and if they have more than three thousand dollars that money can be protected as well but that they're going to need some help from your law firm to do that yeah or they can do it on their cell they can do it themselves they file you know google challenger garnishment claim of exemption you know it's a it's a state process for doing that now i should add that a lot of attorneys and a lot of bank officers don't know this rule that i just talked about probably your bank manager has no idea about this okay i know because i hear it all the time and i would say 99 999 out of a thousand attorneys don't know about this rule even though it's been in effect for quite a while just because they don't practice in that area very often and the other the loss before this went into effect was so long that everyone has embedded that there's a with the old law so no their their income is protected automatically by federal banking regulation that came in effect in 2012. i think congress got tired of having senior citizens crying about their social security and being taken and they had they they may have not known that there was the way they could get it back and it would be it was being taken by creditors so congress corrected it by seeing that a law went into effect or protected automatically and they gave the banks the responsibility to do that people get the judgment if they can't touch their income could they take their car or their house every state has exemption laws okay that um to one degree or another which protect a certain amount of value in certain assets and for example certain states have what's called a homestead exempt it protects equity in a home and like in california i think it's it's gone up to five hundred thousand dollars in a lot of places and in oklahoma it's unlimited in texas it's unlimited in florida it's really large and then some states like virginia it's it's really small tennessee it's really small pennsylvania i don't think they even have a homestead exemption uh but then they have exemptions for other things like interest in car household goods things like that um and normally those exemptions apply in bankruptcy but if if a senior owned money and they had a judgment okay a default judgment uh to a credit card company and maybe they had equity in a home or one of these other assets like a free and clear car the question is do they have to worry about a judgment creditor coming and taking the home or the car or these other assets the answer is really no it is not the practice of consumer judgment creditors to go after a person's property either a home or personal property it just isn't done for a lot of different reasons now it's theoretically possible and you could strike fear into someone's heart by telling them that that is a possibility or that could happen but that's wrong if you don't say in the same breath that it's it would be highly unusual for that to happen and there's means to have it stopped if it were to happen well that's really reassuring but that brings up the question if for a lot of seniors their bank accounts are protected their income is protected and a lot of their assets are protected why are companies suing them in the first place doesn't it cost them money and energy to sue them yeah it costs some money to assume but it's a it's a it's a cost of doing business i'm sure they've calculated that if we sue so many people s such and such a percentage will end up paying it they're gonna they're gonna sell something they're going to borrow something from their family or they're going to pay it because a lot of seniors frankly don't know their rights number one they don't know that their income is protected so if they get sued they're worried they're going to lose their income and so they figure out whatever they can to get the debt paid now the creditor will never tell them by the way mrs smith your social security and your little pension is protected by law we can't take it from you you really don't have to pass no they're not going to tell them that they would never tell them that even the debt management and debt consolidation companies that supposedly help seniors uh who have debt who call them with debt problems will never tell them that so if they're not going to tell them that a judgment creditor is never going to tell them that or a debt collector is never going to tell them that so they don't know their rights and so they're intimidated by the process and they try to pay it when they really don't have to or they can't afford to somebody who can't afford to pay their bills isn't going to be able to afford an attorney um and what happens in the case where you feel like hey i really don't owe this money but you can't afford an attorney is it worth showing up then even if you're showing up by yourself to defend yourself yeah yeah of course um a person can represent themselves in court that's possible uh and it's called pro se which is a latin word for for yourself judges are really open to people defending themselves they're i you know i've been in practice now for over 40 years uh judges a lot of i would say the vast majority of times will bend over backwards to help a person especially a senior citizen that wants to defend themselves on a lawsuit for some reason now i suppose it should you know my opinion it should be there should be an actual defense if but if you owe the money you really don't need to do that but yeah you can defend yourself i mean you can research you know how to file an answer or respond to i mean the internet will give you enough information you could even write how long and the court will take about anything to as a response where someone is trying to contest a lawsuit and they'll just set it up for their standard procedures i mean they make money by having trials and having people go to court so they don't discourage it you owe me 500 and you can't afford an attorney but you have that cancelled 500 check and you should definitely make an effort to go to court and show the judge the yeah if it's 500 you've probably been sued in small claims court which means that attorneys can't appear in small claims court and that court is designed specifically for people to appear and represent themselves it's like judge judy um people just go in there and you appear in front of a judge you tell your story the other side tells their story judge makes a decision but once again if you if you do that and you lose so what if you're a senior your income's protected you don't have to pay it okay that's what that's the number one thing i want seniors to realize is that their income is protected their assets and almost all instances are safe and they don't have to worry about old debt they can't afford to pay i don't want seniors going without medicine going out food turning off the heat to pay debt they can't afford to pay it's not necessary and laws have been passed because society doesn't want our seniors to go without their basic needs if you know you're the money you don't have to show up in court it's not a crime you're not sure if you're basically admitting that yes you do have the money and since your income and bank account assets are protected then you won't have to pay it but are there times when a senior does have to show up in court yes and i'll explain why and when okay and once again often there's some misinformation about this area that that needs to be cleared up okay so if a if a judgment creditor a creditor gets sued someone gets a judgment then they have a right to ask questions to determine if that person has assets okay and one of the ways they can do that is by setting something that's often called a debtor's examination uh there might be a different term in in different states for that word but most states use that word a debtor's examination so if you have a judgment against you that means you're the debtor an examination is where the judgment creditor has a right to ask you questions and so what the judgment creditor will do is they'll go to the court and they'll have a judge sign a paper citing you to come into court at a specific date and time to be answer questions about your debt that you owe for this judgment and that will have a date and time okay now that's different than a summons this has to do there's already been a judgment but the way you can identify a debtor's exam is number one by what it's called and number two it is signed by a judge okay a summon complaint isn't signed by a judge it's signed by an attorney okay who sued you but um a debtor's exam is signed by a judge now that's an order to come into court and sometimes it'll say if you don't come in you can be cited for contempt of court um so that's something where you need to go to court now if you didn't the common practice is if you didn't go to that debtor's exam then the attorney or whoever prepared that debtor's exam would prepare a paper to have you cited in court and you could be served again and if you didn't go the second time to correct that your failure to go the first time the judge would actually uh a warrant a bench warrant for your arrest okay now normally a sheriff wouldn't go out and execute on that they'd wait for someone to be driving around and then pick them up but that could happen it's theoretically possible i've had i've seen it happen many times i've been involved in it so you you want to be aware and we're when we talk to seniors you know we always clarify with them you know we want to be aware if there's ever they ever get papers that talk about a debtor's exam or examination we want to know about that now probably 99 percent of time we can we reach out to the attorney that filed the paperwork and we shall we give them the proof that their income is protected and and say hey listen do you really want to go through this it's going to be a waste of everyone's time and they'll they'll just drop it because they don't want to go there is they finally realize okay well someone knows the law and it's going to be a waste of time to do this but i think some one reason they do that is if someone got that order then they're going to be scared and pay the debt even though they don't have to if someone does get a summons or a notice of a debtor's exam and they're really unclear as to what to do and they're scared as you said this can instill fear in seniors um how can the helps law firm help them well they can always call us and talk to us helps we're a 501c which is a charitable non-profit law firm we represent seniors in all 50 states to stop debt collector harassment okay that's our number one goal uh under federal law if a person is represented by an attorney debt collectors can no longer call or send demand letters to that person anymore so when persons enroll in our program they give us the debt collectors or creditors whom they owe money we send a letter out to them saying hey this person's income is social security and a little pension don't bother him anymore you can communicate with us and under the law they have to leave alone and they will they will leave him alone and then we also tell our clients hey if you ever get sued get us the legal papers then we contact the attorney and we tell them hey here's proof their income is protected normally you know go ahead and take your judgment but you know don't touch their bank account and they won't and they can't for the other reasons we already talked about so um yeah they can call us and we can you know and if one of our clients got if we determine what they got was a debtor's exam then yeah we would contact the attorney and get that worked out rarely does anyone ever have to go to court for a debtor's exam that we work with i mean if that happens you know we can usually get a pro bono attorney where they live to represent them but there's a lot of information about debtors and one thing i want to say about it is a lot of seniors are scared about a debtor's exam when they don't need to be okay it just doesn't happen that often and it can be corrected or stopped but they're just in fear of it uh okay and they don't need to be like they don't need to be about being sued but if you don't understand the law it's natural to be that way so i'll you know i'll give you that and that's true and i understand that but you understand that's why creditors do this because they play on people's fears and their ignorance of the law to get them to pay debt that the senior can't afford to pay and they don't need to pay being so reassuring one other fear that people of all ages have is when they talk to an attorney they're going to run up hundreds if not thousands of dollars in legal fees so how is calling up the helps law firm different before i started helps i did you know 30 40 000 bankruptcy so i uh and i knew that there was a need for seniors they couldn't afford bankruptcy they didn't need to file bankruptcy because their income was protected but creditors could call them on the phone and make their lives miserable so there's a federal law called the fair debt collection practices act that provides when a person's represented by an attorney collectors have to leave him alone and so that's what we do uh and we represent seniors ongoing as their attorneys literally for the rest of their lives so they don't have to deal with collectors anymore they ever have a question or they're concerned or worried they can always call us on the phone we communicate with them all the time so they're not worried as far as the cost about one out of four of our clients get our help for free we don't turn anyone away that needs the help that we provide uh ever uh those that pay pay a very minimal amount an average might be twenty dollars for twelve months then ten dollars a month and after three years the payment goes down to five dollars a month away but we it it's it's really nominal what we charge for those that can afford it but if a person can't afford it and their income is low they get our help for free uh our purpose is to protect seniors as far as i know we're the only non-profit law firm in the nation that does what we do it's very needful there's a lot of seniors that need this help they have no idea that it's available and so we want people to share what we do with others so because there's no need for seniors to be worried or scared and it's you know sometimes i think helps it it's like the bomb of gilead in the bible it's like bible it's it's it's an assurance that hey i have an attorney i don't need to worry i can call the attorney if i'm scared or have a question or worried and that's what we're here for great and if someone wants to contact you how can they do that well we're all over the internet uh www.helps.helps is here.org or they can talk call us toll free at 855 helps he lps us helps us or helps us or 855-435-7787 and call us and we'll talk to them about their situation and if we can help them we're glad to help them or or put send them in the right direction we do a lot of other things our second function is to educate seniors so they can maintain their financial independence we give them information what they can do to to live within their means so that they don't have to worry great well appreciate the work you do on behalf of seniors and thank you very much eric thank you jeff thanks for having me [Music] you

Channel: SeniorLiving.Org

Views: 99,403

Keywords: getting sued for debt, getting sued for credit card debt, seniors, sued for debt, debt, senior finance, bank account, senior bank account, pension, protect pension, pension protection, social security, social security benefits, debt collections, debt collectors, debt collectors call, stop debt collector calls, lawsuit, judgment, judgement, debt judgment, debt judgement, debtor's exam, debtor's examination, garnishment, don't show up to court, summary judgement, Small claims court

Id: 1iWDeAyjKuA

Length: 24min 24sec (1464 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021