Owe Money? Be Careful, or You Might End Up in Jail

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Anneli Rufus

Owe Money? Be Careful, or You Might End Up in Jail
Owing money is not a criminal offense in the USA. But big business has found a way to end-run this process.

June 19, 2010 |


Reports of mild-mannered Americans getting arrested for being in debt are starting to pop up in states across the country. All over the Net, we've been reading about these poor saps snatched off the street — right in front of their horrified children — by glowering cops and locked up just for missing a few credit card payments.

Right, but they're not. They can't. In this country, owing money is not a criminal offense. It is in Dubai, where nearly half of the prison population is behind bars for defaulting on bank loans. But in the United States, incarceration for debt was abolished in 1833, and now debt itself is a mere civil matter. Sure, collection agencies want you to think the FBI cares whether or not you pay that Nordstrom bill. But they risk losing their licenses for so much as implying this, thanks to the U.S. Fair Trade Commission's Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, in effect since 1966.

Read between the lines and you'll see that these debtors weren't arrested for being debtors but — in most cases — for missing court dates for negotiating their debts.

Incur debt and your creditor can call you, write you, hire a collection agency and finally sue you. At that point a subpoena, delivered via process server or registered mail, announces that you're now a defendant, your creditor a plaintiff. This subpoena lists a date and time at which you are ordered to appear before a judge in civil court "to disclose your assets and liabilities and determine how this defendant is going to pay this plaintiff," explains Will Lund, superintendent of Maine's Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection, which enforces the FDCA and licenses collection agencies.

"Attendance by the defendant is mandatory. To ensure that it's mandatory, a subpoena is involved. To not show up is not dissing the plaintiff. It's dissing the court," Lund says. "It's contempt of court, and that can lead to arrest."

Most debtors don't realize that ignoring the summons means crossing that line, exiting the stressful but safe realm of owing money and entering the stark realm of mugshots and body searches and jail-issued sandwiches eaten among robbers and arsonists. This transit happens when a judge signs a capias, a civil warrant for arrest on the basis of failure to appear in court. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/147258/owe_money_be_careful%2C_or_you_might_end_up_in_jail/

[the other one]

1. I don't believe it

If you don't show up you will lose the judgement. Then the plaintiff takes everything it wants and garnishes your wages. No prison.

[depakid]

2. Fail to show up at a judgment debtor's exam and a warrant can and will be issued for your arrest

-whether you "believe it" is immaterial.

[Berry Cool]

3. That article is horrible.

It tells about all the things that can be done to people who owe debts in this country, including imprisonment for not appearing in court, and then ends lamely with "At least you're better off here than in China, where they can imprison you for life and force you into slave labor." Whoopee. God bless America! :sarcasm: