We have a small office to rent in South Tampa – five minutes from downtown. Beautiful Mediterranean building (I had to google to actually spell that – lol!). Looking to rent to a solo attorney for around $450 -$500 depending upon services needed. Full service office with conference room and receptionist. Email me at christie@christiearkovich.com if interested. Address is 1520 W. Cleveland St., Tampa, FL 33606.
It’s more difficult for a creditor, including the government for federal student loans, to garnish income from someone who is self-employed — but it can be done. Once the creditor is aware that someone is self-employed, they can have a second order entered to go after non-earnings paid to the debtor. If a debtor runs his or her income through their own LLC, this can always be worked around with a second order directed toward the LLC, and then a regular wage garnishment if they are an employee, or a non-earnings order if they are an independent contractor.
The good news for someone faced with this, is that it will take time for the creditor to figure out how to reach this income – this is time that a settlement can be reached with a private creditor or a federal loan can be rehabbed to cure any default. Bankruptcy should also be considered. The bad news is if you continue to ignore it, the garnishment once it finally goes through is not limited to 15-25% of your wages, but now they can take 100%. So like many things legal, ignore a garnishment order at your own peril – even if you are self-employed.
Non-Earnings Garnishment Orders
Credit card debt is on the rise – not surprisingly considering that incomes have remained stagnant while daily expenses have increased over the past few years. With inflation on the rise, consumers need to be vigilant about creeping emotional expenses that make a mess of a well planned budget.
The Dollar Stretcher.com pointed out recently that emotions can make someone poor – i.e. spending money when unnecessary. They offer some really good advice:
During the financial crisis, many banks, especially Bank of America, N.A., received credit under the National Mortgage Settlement Act when they wrote off an underwater second mortgage. This was very common in Florida because many 80/20 mortgages were written around 2004-2007 and values crashed in 2008.
However, now years later, homeowners are finding out that the banks never filed the appropriate document in official records to wipe out the second mortgage: this would be called a Satisfaction. Some homeowners are unable to sell their home without now paying or otherwise resolving this released debt, or are even being sued for the debt.
It is likely that this is a violation of our consumer protection laws, specifically the FDCPA and FCCPA. These laws allow for statutory and actual damages as well as attorney’s fees. It is unknown how widespread this may become.
Part II: What can people do when they have private student loan debt?
Private loans don’t have any government programs like federal loans do – payments are not based upon income, there is no debt forgiveness and no protections for someone who becomes disabled and cannot work. However, they will settle. They key is to put them in the position of wanting or having to settle. How we do this is we help our client track consumer collection law violations.
How many times do they call you a day? Do they call your cell phone after you’ve told them not to? Do they call you at work after you’ve told them not to? Do they call before 8:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m.? Do they discuss your debt with third parties? All of that is potentially illegal under the FDCPA, FCCPA and the TCPA and provides us with leverage to settle a debt and ways to escalate the conversation to a decision maker with higher authority to negotiate a settlement.
The tax landscape for student loan forgiveness is constantly shifting. Earlier this year we blogged about disability discharges of federal student loan debt no longer considered taxable. Discharges in bankruptcy for either federal loans under a Brunner challenge or non-qualified private student loans that don’t meet the definitions for discharge protection are both non-taxable events.
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for federal loans also provides a tax free total forgiveness after ten years of qualifying payments. Talk to us if you have questions about whether your loans qualify, your employment qualifies, or your payments qualify. There are sticky questions that may prevent relief after years of payments if done wrong.
The IRS also allows for tax relief for taxpayers who took out federal student loans for attendance at Corinthian Colleges and other schools owned by American Career Institutes (ACI) and were granted a discharge under the Defense to Repayment program.
Just now, I got off the phone with a very sophisticated potential client who is facing a garnishment for his federal loans. This was a very intelligent person and well respected in his field, but he didn’t really know much about how the student loan system worked. His closing comment to me before we ended the call was “What a productive phone call!” I often hear “I wish I had called you years ago, I’d be that much further ahead”.
I mention this because due to high demand, we now have to charge for our student loan consultations – $175.
But we offer a Guarantee:
Matt Taibbi with Rolling Stone, wrote a recent piece called “The Great College Loan Swindle” that outlines how we got here. It started with sales pitches that colleges make to kids – comparisons of salaries of those with high school diplomas to those with 4 yr degrees. The value of that degree over a lifetime of earnings. Investing in yourself was a common phrase used by for-profit colleges. It creates a vicious cycle, everyone feels obligated to go to college, most everyone who can go does, and then you have a glut of graduates which is where we are now. And this isn’t limited to just the student. Parents wanting to help their kids every way they can, co-sign on loans they cannot possibly repay, or sign their own loans called Parent Plus loans. Parent Plus loans do not take into consideration the income and employability of the parent or grandparent who applies for the loan. Not surprisingly, Parent Plus loans have been cited by the CFPB as having extremely high default rates.
So Step 1, convince everyone a college degree is necessary in life.
Step 2: make it easy to borrow the money.
The Fraudsters radio show interviewed me this week for about an hour on how consumers can arm themselves and proactively protect their credit report, stop or fix violations, and obtain damages for violations under the TCPA, FDCPA, FCCPA and the FCRA. Here’s a direct link to the interview about how we can help clients with these claims to settle or eliminate debt.
From time to time, our consumer law practice here in Tampa, Fl has had to shift gears to better use our state and federal laws that protect consumers faced with debt – and the inevitable robocalls and erroneous credit reports that come with that.
The current state of robocalls is very similar to the days of emails before spam filters. With the advent of the internet, businesses don’t need expensive hardware. Anyone can start a mini call center with software that auto dials and spoofs caller IDs. Many of the calls appear local and they avoid detection as a debt collector. Small and large companies both still use predictive dialers capable of making hundreds of thousands of calls daily despite a consumer withdrawing consent to call their cell phone.
Thankfully, over the next year or two, the FCC and phone companies will implement a call certification protocol where the phone carrier can verify the caller is legitimately using the number — and Caller IDs may once again mean something!
Reboot Your Life: Tampa Student Loan and Bankruptcy Attorney Blog