Your After-Bankruptcy Five Year Warranty:

Exclusively from Robert Weed Law

Here’s our Five Year After-Bankruptcy Warranty

If a discharged debt comes back after bankruptcy and interferes with your “fresh start,” we will: 1.  Ask the Bankruptcy Judge to fine them; or 2.  Sue them in court; or 3.  Ask for civil enforcement from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; or 4.  File a criminal complaint with the FBI

Here’s what that means:

We will keep fighting for you up to five years, when someone violates the bankruptcy discharge or interferes with your “fresh start.”

Hundreds of people across America have complained to me on my blog that their lawyer won’t answer their after bankruptcy questions or help with after bankruptcy problems.    Here at Robert Weed Law, we do.  If discharged debts come back to haunt you, having the law on your side isn’t always enough–you need to have your lawyer on your side, too.

Your Credit Report

Your credit report is one place where there can be serious violations of your “fresh start.”  Your creditors are supposed to report all your debts as “discharged in bankruptcy” and the credit bureaus are required by law to see that they do. Ten years ago, I was one of the very first lawyers in the country to fight the credit bureaus over this–and there are still only a handful of lawyers who do that today. Our promise is this.  Starting two months after your bankruptcy–and for five years after–we will fight any discharged creditor who shows a charge off balance or payment due on your credit report.

Before we can sue under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you need to send a dispute by mail or internet to the credit bureaus.  You may have to do it three times!.

We have to work together on this.  You have to get your credit reports and send them to us.  I explain that here.   And, while we will show you how to dispute them, you have to do the dispute.  (The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires that the dispute be done by you, not your lawyer.  15 USC 1681i(a)(1)(A).)

If three disputes don’t work, we sue.  (I know that three disputes seems overkill.  Here’s why.  You do NOT have a right to have your credit report be right.  Your only right is a right to an investigation.  So you have to keep disputing until it’s clear they refuse to investigate.  Then, and only then, do you have a right to sue.)

In a typical month, we sue creditors or credit bureaus once or twice, because it’s the only way to fix people’s after bankruptcy credit report. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has enforcement authority under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.  When we see chronic violators, we ask the CFPB to take action.  (Here’s a link to their complaint form for Fair Credit Reporting Violations.)

Debt Collectors

Weeks, months, even years after your bankruptcy is discharged, you may have a debt collector contacting you, demanding payment. These debt collectors usually say they never got notice of the bankruptcy; and sometimes they say bankruptcy does not apply to them. We have a three strike rule, on after-bankruptcy creditor harassment.  On first contact, please tell them that you have filed bankruptcy and send them to me.  (There is some chance they really don’t know about the bankruptcy.)  On the second contact, one of my bankruptcy paralegals will call and warn them.   If there’s a third violation, we take them to court.  Usually the Bankruptcy Court, but sometimes the United State District Court, depending on how serious the violation and how mad you and I are.

Underground Debt Collectors

I can sue legitimate companies that step over the line and try to collect debts that were discharged in the bankruptcy.  But that doesn’t work with underground outfits who know they are illegal and don’t care.  We have one or two clients a month who get blatantly illegal threats from underground debt collectors. (We also get one or two people who tell us before they filed bankruptcy they got a scary call from on of these outfits.  People who don’t have a good lawyer often pay up because they are so scared.) These underground debt collectors will often demand a payment in the next three hours or say the sheriff is on his way to arrest you. Most often these underground debt collectors are collecting payday loans–sometimes you cannot tell what they are collecting or whether there really was any debt at all. Besides hanging up and laughing it off, there are two things that can be done.  The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has this link  for illegal debt collectors.  And if it’s wire fraud, you can also go here  to report to the FBI.

Please stay in touch

For any of this to work, you need to stay in touch with us.  If you contact us about any problems, make sure you update your phone, address and email.  We’ll need to agree in writing that I’m your lawyer, again.

Thanks!  — Robert Weed.