Posted on 03/07/2009 1:07:43 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I had signed up about six months before the wave hit.
I think it's only fair. After all, if the dead can vote, they should be able to pay their bills..............
1. A long line for filing restraining orders
2. A long line for child support enforcement
3. Just me for actual “Probate” business
I was absolutely frightened when I walked into the office: I was the only male and I assume that when I walked into the office, everyone there assumed I was dealing with either 1 or 2. The looks I got from the “customers” in there honestly were scary. What I overheard the scum that were there blathering about was typical for today’s society-they wanted whomever arrested and wanted “their” money-NOW!
I walked over to the computer, got the docket number of the will, submitted it to a clerk, made a photocopy of the file and ran the hell out of there.
It was like the cantina scene from Star Wars “You will never find a more wretched kind of scum and villany”.
Uncivilized doesn't begin to describe the Probate Court from my experience.
if not mistaken the federal fair debt collection statutes do not allow the pursuit of uncollectable debt.
State laws are even more stingint. (generally each new collection agency has to give 30 days notice they are now collecting on the debt and they are bound by prior communications or dispute or denial)
At that point I set the phone down, line open, and go back to watching "Green Acres."
Thanks - I just signed up.
It goes down hill from there in civillity.
I understand that people have to make a living somehow, and not everyone is cut out for more honorable and socially acceptable work like mucking out hog pens, and will give the caller a chance to cease and desist gracefully.
Some just keep going, and I will (if I am in the mood) play them. When they ask for a credit card number, I respond like Hashimoto in the old Cheech and Chong bit. (unprintable response on this forum)...and continue with "YOU called me and you expect ME to just give you a credit card number?? Are you nuts? I don't know who you are! You could be anyone!") And then hang up.
Maybe they will learn not to waste their time with people who say "no".
Living wills have nothing to do with it. They deal with medical decision-making.
You're thinking of living trusts, and they are NOT what they're cracked up to be. And they're often just as lucrative for attorneys, if not more so, than a traditional estate plan.
Worse still, you can get incessant calls if a debtor is the last person to have a phone number that was just assigned to you. For years our church used to get calls from debt collectors pursuing some woman, Vera something-or-other, alive or dead I have no idea.
Youre Dead? That Wont Stop the Debt Collector
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/business/04dead.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
If I get a call where I don’t recognise the voice- I hang up. Perhaps not so polite, but I have had it with calls when I am on a DO NOT CALL list.
You’re thinking of living trusts, and they are NOT what they’re cracked up to be. And they’re often just as lucrative for attorneys, if not more so, than a traditional estate plan.
That hasn’t been my experience, if the trust is set up properly. An aunt died and the total attorney fee was about $250.00. Which was thousands of dollars less then it would have been in probate.
Well, I recall a conversation with a pastor one time, during which he confided that in seminary they had offered training in how to approach people with terminal illnesses, even on their death beds, asking for large bequests to the church.
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