While a collection letter can be scary, there are a lot of ways that you can handle it. In fact, a collection letter is sometimes a good thing because it opens up the chance that you could repair your credit.
How Long Do You Have?
After receiving the letter you will have thirty days to discuss the debt with the collector. You can ask them to prove that you owe the amount, and if they cannot then you do not have to pay it. In addition to this, you can ask them to stop trying to collect the amount from you. You should always respond within thirty days, however. Otherwise you will continue to face issues with your credit.
How Long Do They Have?
There is a statute of limitations on debt, which means they need to collect it in a certain amount of time or it becomes void. This means that if you wait this out, and it doesn’t go to court, they can no longer collect the debt. If the debt is about to expire anyway, you can consider waiting it out to see if they will drop the case.
What Do You Do?
How you deal with a collection is a personal matter. You can pay it off so that it stops affecting your credit, but you can also just wait until it drops off your credit. If the statute of limitations has already been met, there really isn’t anything you are obligated to do. You can still be taken to court but you will just need to tell the judge that the statute of limitations has already passed.
Some Other Considerations
There are a lot of specific laws that concern different types of debt, which means you do want to be very careful when dealing with debt. You shouldn’t just assume that a debt has expired without doing the appropriate research, and you also should make sure to take into consideration state specific laws rather than just federal ones or laws from other areas.
Get it Handled
If you’re truly worried about an account in collections, you can simply have it handled by a credit agency. This can often make the entire process much easier, as they already know all the rules and they can handle it quickly and effectively.