Florida Woman Sues Debt Collector And Bank

News and Col­lec­tion Agency Regulations

Florida Woman Sues Debt Col­lec­tor And Bank

By Dean Kaplan

A man and wife in Florida were mar­ried for almost 40 years. Last year, the hus­band died of can­cer, leav­ing the wife heart­bro­ken and pen­ni­less. The hus­band died with a credit card debt of over $15,000. In the state of Florida, when a per­son dies, his or her credit card debt dies too, unless the credit card is under more than the deceased person’s name. In this case, only the husband’s name was on the credit card.

Within a short time of his death, the wife began receiv­ing phone calls from a debt col­lec­tor who said he was call­ing on behalf of the bank who issued the credit card. The wife told the col­lec­tor that she had no money, no inher­i­tance, only a very small life insur­ance pol­icy for her hus­band worth only a cou­ple of thou­sand dol­lars and that none of the debt was under her name. The debt col­lec­tor told the wife that as a fam­ily mem­ber, she was not per­son­ally respon­si­ble for the debt. Despite say­ing this, the calls con­tin­ued, and the debt col­lec­tor even offered to get the debt amount reduced to only $12,500 if that would make a dif­fer­ence or if any of her fam­ily mem­bers could help her out.

Despite the wife repeat­edly telling the col­lec­tor that she had no assets, was unable to pay, and was not legally oblig­ated to pay the debt, the calls con­tin­ued until she had been con­tacted 15 times. By this time, the wife was dis­traught and called a lawyer.

The bot­tom line is in the state of Florida, this woman was not required to pay her deceased husband’s credit card debt. The col­lec­tor knew this from the very first phone call, but con­tin­ued to call and harass the woman and make her feel she was oblig­ated to pay. While this woman never gave the col­lec­tor any money, many unsus­pect­ing con­sumers have been bul­lied and harassed into mak­ing pay­ments even when legally they don’t need to.

If you are ever con­tacted by a debt col­lec­tor, be sure to learn exactly what your legal rights and oblig­a­tions are in the state in which you reside. Laws are dif­fer­ent from state to state. The Inter­net can be a good source of infor­ma­tion, but this infor­ma­tion can also be incom­plete or inaccurate.

The Kaplan Group is a com­mer­cial col­lec­tion agency. We are spe­cial­ists in busi­ness to busi­ness col­lec­tions and do not deal with indi­vid­ual con­sumers unless they per­son­ally guar­an­teed a busi­ness debt. A busi­ness or col­lec­tion agency try­ing to col­lect on out­stand­ing com­mer­cial debt has exten­sive legal rights too. The most impor­tant law to under­stand is that the Fair Debt Prac­tices Col­lec­tion Act (FDCPA) does not apply to com­mer­cial debts.

The Kaplan Group is fully up-to-date on all the laws per­tain­ing to com­mer­cial col­lec­tions through­out the USA. We often have to explain to peo­ple that the rights they are try­ing to invoke from the FDCPA do not apply in com­mer­cial col­lec­tions. Being able to effec­tively artic­u­late these points is an excel­lent col­lec­tion tac­tic. If you have spe­cific com­mer­cial col­lec­tion needs, feel free to con­tact the Kaplan Group to learn more about their services.

The Kaplan Group is a bou­tique col­lec­tion agency spe­cial­iz­ing in large (over $10,000) debt col­lec­tions due from busi­nesses. Founded in 1991, the com­pany has a stel­lar rep­u­ta­tion (A+ rat­ing with the Bet­ter Busi­ness Bureau) and is rec­og­nized as one of the lead­ing col­lec­tion agen­cies for results on large and com­plex mat­ters.

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