Debt Collectors Find the Dead Can Be More Lucrative Than the Living
Often, the living have no obligation to pay the debts of dead relatives. But a growing legion of sympathetic debt collectors is seeking to persuade them to do so.
With the help of today’s database technology, it’s relatively easy to determine when an estate is opened in any of the nation’s 3,000 probate courts, allowing bill collectors to file timely claims when estates have the money to pay them. But when that’s not an option, what one collection agency calls “empathic active listening” comes into play, reports the New York Times.
“I am out of work now, to be honest with you, and money is very tight for us,” one man said recently, when told over the phone of a $280 credit card bill owed by his late mother-in-law. Nonetheless, he promised to $15 monthly on the debt, the newspaper reports.
Strong-arm tactics aren’t exactly unheard of in debt collection matters, MarketWatch columnist Chuck Jaffe wrote a year ago.
And, in a follow-up column today he notes that the Federal Trade Commission in a report issued last week is calling for changes in the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to enhance consumer rights.
However, “it all amounts to a baby step’s worth of progress, largely because there’s still nothing in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to give it teeth,” Jaffe writes. Although consumers can sue to enforce their rights, and have won some courtroom victories, such litigation appears to have little effect in actually preventing bad behavior by bill collectors, he contends.
