If you have credit card debt and you refuse to make payments on it, your credit card company could potentially eventually sue you. If you have a lawsuit filed against you by a credit card company, there are many things that could happen, including having your wages garnished or your property taken.
Collection
If you are more than 60 days behind on your credit card payment, your credit card company most likely will place your account in collections. They may handle this internally or outsource it to a collections agency. This means that you will start receiving phone calls from the collections agent. You will also receive a notice in the mail asking you to pay your bill. At this point, they will be very persistent in trying to recover the debt by contacting you repeatedly.
Lawsuit
If you do not repay the debt once it is in collections for a certain amount of time, the credit card company may decide to file a lawsuit against you. At that point, you will receive a notice from your local court system that a lawsuit has been filed against you. You will have to appear in court and argue your case in front of a judge. Most of the time, the credit card company will win the case if they can prove that you accumulated the debt.
Wage Garnishment
If you lose the case against the credit card company, one of the things that could happen to you is wage garnishment. This is a situation in which part of your pay is taken out of your paycheck every time that you are paid. When trying to determine if they will pursue wage garnishment, a credit card company will look at your employment history. If you have been in the same job for many years, you make a good candidate for wage garnishment.
Lien
Another potential consequence of having a lawsuit filed against you is that your property could have a lien placed on it. If you have property with value in it, the judge could order a lien placed on it. This means that you cannot sell the property without addressing the debt first. For example, the judge could place a lien on your house. When you sell the house, the proceeds from the sale would go to paying off the debt first.
Options
When you get in trouble with credit card debt, it is important to handle it as quickly as you can before allowing a lawsuit to be filed. There are a number of options for addressing debt. For example, you could take out a home equity loan and use it to pay off your debt. You could also transfer your credit card balance to a new card with an introductory zero percent interest rate, but only do this if you can quickly pay the balance.
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