Filing for bankruptcy is rarely a first choice of anyone who is facing financial difficulty, but one of many reasons why someone might take that step is to stop creditor harassment. When someone files for bankruptcy one of the first things that is supposed to happen is that creditor harassment is supposed to stop.
Even when the bankruptcy case is still pending, banks and other debtors are forbidden from contacting the people that owe them money and asking them to settle their debt. But in some cases, the phone keeps ringing. And for a former Bank of America client, the phone rang an additional 38 times.
It’s hard to tell why the calls kept coming. Maybe the name of the person didn’t get deleted from their list for some reason, or maybe they just thought they could get a few bucks before the bankruptcy went through. But whether Bank of America was negligent or intentionally failing to comply with the terms of a bankruptcy case, courts determined that the creditor harassment they continued to inflict was clearly wrong. In the end they were forced to pay a fine that could certainly help the plaintiff pay a few bills.
If you’ve made the leap to file for bankruptcy, and are still facing creditor harassment, you can fight back and win. No matter how you feel about a pending bankruptcy, or how big the pockets of your creditors might be, you don’t have to sit back and tolerate bullying. The protocol behind bankruptcy is set up how it is for a reason, and a good bankruptcy attorney will help see that everyone complies with the rules.
Source: The Huffington Post, “BofA Allegedly Called Debtor 38 Times After He Filed For Bankruptcy,” Alexander Eichler, March 30, 2012
