Debt evasion or debt avoidance is the intentional act of trying to avoid attempts by creditors to collect or pursue one's debt. At an elementary level, this includes the refusal to answer one's phone by screening one's calls or by ignoring mailed notices informing the debtor of the debt.
In more advanced cases, this includes misleading the creditor to believe the debtor does not reside at the location where the creditor is attempting to reach the debtor.
Debt evasion is common because many people are scared of creditors when they owe many and feel uncomfortable confronting those attempting to collect debt. But evasion does not make the debt disappear, and does not make the debtor any less liable toward the creditor. In most cases, debt evasion is not a criminal act.
Methods used to avoid paying a debt
Denying existence
Some debtors pretend to be deceased to avoid paying. For example, if called, the debtor may say s/he is another person and claim the debtor does not live there or has died.
Court summons avoidance
Some debt is collected by court order. The debtor is summoned to court and must be served by a summons, usually at the hands of a sheriff or process server.
Many attempt to avoid contact with the sheriff and pretend they never received the summons. If the creditor can show to the court that the summons to appear in court was served, the creditor is automatically awarded the case and may start collecting.
Statute of limitations
Some jurisdictions have a statute of limitations that limits the time between the last activity on the debt and the commencement of a civil suit. Once the limitation period expires, debtors can use this fact to stop the calls from an agency by demanding a civil suit be initiated, at which point they may successfully defend based on the expiration of the limitation period.
Foreign bank accounts
Some may be able to protect their assets by transferring them into a bank account in a foreign country, where the money is considered to be untouchable according to the laws of the country where the judgment was made.
Strategic Debt Default
Brent T. White, an associate professor of law at the University of Arizona, has a different perspective on mortgage debt: “Homeowners should be walking away in droves,” he writes in a new discussion paper entitled “Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis.” (Read the full paper.)
FTC Notice Beginning December 1, 2009, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began enforcing new rules regarding transparency in advertising relations between product endorsers, advertisers, affiliate marketers, product reviewers, bloggers, celebrities, and other marketers, and the general public.
Opinions on this blog/website are our own or others we have designated as contributing authors. No one else is responsible for the content. We have not received any compensation for writing posts, articles, reviews, or other content, and we have no material connection to the brands or products mentioned, except as noted below. We do not accept free products from manufacturers or advertisers or free books from writers and publishers in exchange for a review or an article. All of the product reviews on this blog are influenced solely by the performance of the product itself. We do not receive any kind of monetary compensation for content or reviews including cash or free products.
Affiliate Notice We maintain an affiliate/publisher/republisher relationship with hundreds of companies. This page may contain “affiliate links” to one or more of these companies.
An affiliate link is a special URL to the affiliate merchant which lets him/her know you reached his/her site/sales page through my recommendation, text link, or banner ad.
If you follow an affiliate link from this website and purchase a product or service, or complete a lead form, we hope to be paid a commission from the affiliate or CPA merchant. Affiliate links may be textual or banner or both. This site may contain in-context textual ads or banner ads, such as from Google, or others over which we have no control over the content. We may or may not have an affiliate/business relationship with the companies advertising on those services. If you click on one of these links, we hope to be paid a small sum for sending you to that merchant’s site. Otherwise, we would have no reason to give Google and others space on this website.You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. We cannot control the activities of other advertisers or web sites. Unless otherwise stated, the website guest or visitor should assume that any link to a third-party vendor is a paid link, and that the author or website owner may receive compensation for that link.
Legal Information Is Not Legal Advice This site provides information about the law designed to help users safely cope with their own legal needs. But legal information is not the same as legal advice -- the application of law to an individual's specific circumstances. Although we go to great lengths to make sure our information is accurate and useful, we recommend you consult a lawyer if you want professional assurance that our information, and your interpretation of it, is appropriate to your particular situation.
Consumer Credit Counseling Information, Debt Management Plan Information, Debt Settlement Plan information, Credit Counseling, Credit Score, Consumer Credit Counseling Service, CCCS, Bill Consolidation, Credit Repair, and Debt Consolidation is not advice, and we recommend you consult a licensed credit counseling agency, debt settlement attorney, and/or licensed debt management plan administrator in your state if you want professional assurance that our information, and your interpretation of it, is appropriate to your particular situation.
