Back in the late 80's/early 90's I got myself into a lot of credit card debt and student loan debt.
By 1993 (at the bottom of the last big recession) I made settlements with all my credit card companies. I was unemployed for a long while, so I was unable to pay my student loan debts, I in fact never made one payment and by 1995 I NEVER HEARD FROM THEM AGAIN. In 1994 I moved abroad to China and then other countries for many years. By 2002 or so all of my credit reports essentially were clean as all late payments and settlements became expunged from my record.
I heard NOTHING from the student loan company for years. then in 2003 or so I would receive an occasional notice, to my relatives US address which would be nothing more than a privacy statement from the state education authority.
Recently I received some papers from a collection agency saying that they now had the debt and quite frankly they were trying to collect much more than they should have. They stated all sort of 30 day warning garbage, however my credit report is still clean (empty in fact).
I normally would not care less, however I am looking into buying a house back home, for my mother to live in, and perhaps my family one day and I worry that this could negatively effect my credit. I wonder, can this come back to haunt me, essentially after 15 years of no news, no reports?
A friend of mine told me that they probably think I'm dead.
Opinions?
Since you have made the last payment towards the debt in 2003, 15 years has already passed and your Statute of Limitation on the debt has expired, because SOL varies from 3 years to 15 years depending upon the state where you have signed the loan agreement. It will also not show in your credit report since 7 years has already passed since you have made the last payment towards the debt. So you need not pay off the debt.
You should not make even a small payment toward this debt as the SOL has expired and the creditor cannot do anything to recover the debt. But if you make any payment, the SOL will again restart because the current payment you have made will be your last payment and the creditor can sue you to the court to recover the entire outstanding debt.
thank you, I thought that was the case, I should add that I have in fact NEVER made a payment, there was in fact no last payment. Does that make any difference?
If you have never made a payment towards the debt, it automatically means that there is no last payment. Now since the Statute of Limitation on the debt has expired, the creditor will no longer be able to recover the debt from you.
Yes, you can ignore the collection letter because the Statute of Limitation has already expired and you are no longer required to pay it off. However, you can send a debt validation letter to the collection agency and the CA must validate it within 30 days from the date of receipt of the letter. The CA need to provide you with details of the payment made towards the debt and the date of last payment. Now, since you have never made any payment towards the debt, the validation will automatically prove that the SOL has expired.
update
Since March I have heard nothing from either the collection agency nor the state agency, so I believe that the advice you guys gave me was correct and that it was a last ditched efort from a collection agenc which robably paid 2 cents on the dollar to try to collect something....
credit
Good, JONNY. Glad the situation 'worked out'. Usually a CA will threaten you with 'everything under the sun'. Don't be intimitated. ALOT of CA ( if not all..) tactics are illegal, as it is.