What you’re about to read is highly controversial. It took a lot of encouragement to feel comfortable sending it. I’m sure I’ll get a mountain of blowback from those people who feel like I am helping you cheat the system.
However, I felt obligated to share the following secret.
This secret is a 100% legal way to NOT pay your bills. (It isn’t really a “secret” at all yet so few people bother researching it so it is often ignored.)
Ok – here it is: Use the Statute of Limitations to NOT Pay Your Bills
Here’s how it works:
The statute of limitations is a legalism created by our lawmakers. It creates time limits on certain debts.
In other words, you may not have to pay certain debts after a certain amount of time passes. (I think of it like a “shot clock” for creditors).
I don’t want to get into a super detailed explanation here because it could go on for pages and I’m not a statute of limitations credit lawyer.
However, I can tell you about the basics which include the following:
- The statute of limitations for credit card debt is usually between 4-6 years. (check your local state laws here at bankrate.com)
- A payment or a promise to pay tolls the statute of limitations. So, if you made a small payment towards an old bill, the clock will start from the beginning.
- The statute of limitations eliminates your legal obligation to pay a debt…not your moral obligation to pay that debt.
In other words, if a creditor tries to sue you to collect an expired debt, you could use the statute of limitations as as defense.
- Creditors and collection agencies will keep trying to collect expired debts. They assume (correctly) that most people are ignorant about how to use the statute of limitations to their advantage.
- The statute of limitations will not stop bill collectors from calling and trying to get money from you.
(sorry, it can’t help you in this department – but you can at least feel better knowing that any threats a bill collector makes to sue you are just empty threats)
I’m sure that I’ll get some hate mail because I sent out this information.
However, I’m in no way encouraging you not to pay your bills. My job is to educate you. Laws are created for a reason. It’s not my job to judge whether those laws are fair or not.
My opinion is that these laws were created for some good reasons and that we should use them to our advantage.
If you can use the statute of limitations as leverage when dealing with unethical, unlawful, or rude bill collectors, then I’ve done my job.
By the way, by the time the statute of limitations expires on a debt, it has usually been bought and sold so many times that the current creditor probably paid no more than one or two pennies on the dollar.
Often that same bill collector will try to add ridiculous interest and fees and attempt to gouge you for 150-200% of the original debt.
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