(no subject)

[which_chick]

I faxed off what I have with BadPayer (no payment for thirty days, lying-ass email on 6-20-07 about "the check is in the mail") to brother-the-younger to see what I have to do to pursue BadPayer through the court system. I'm hoping that it will cost me less than a thousand dollars to get a judgment.

In the future, I'll for damn sure know better than to trust the word of someone else about a third party who is unknown to me.

Comments

[carv1982.livejournal.com]

Wow, that really sucks. However, I'm silently keeping all of this in mind because someday I hope to get into rental properties. Just thought you might want to know that you're educating someone. ;-) But good luck with this loser.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

This isn't rental properties. This is loaning money on unsecured notes.
BadPayer is a Note Holder who is NOT paying me interest+principle on a sum of money he borrowed. Because he is NOT paying, I have to go after his ass via the arcane workings of the District Court of Prince William County.

(Why do I file there? Because that's where BadPayer lives and because District Court in Virginia handles civil money disputes up to $15K. See here: http://www.courts.state.va.us/gdc/gdc.htm and look under "Civil Cases". I could wind up in Circuit Court if the amount involved is greater than $4,500 (it is) and the defendant files an affidavit with the court indicating a substantial ground of defense, and if he also pays the accrued court costs, the judge will remove the action to a court of record, which is called a Circuit Court but I'm not sure he *has* a substantial ground of defense. I loaned him the money and he ain't be paying me back.)

Probably what I'll need to file is a Warrant of Debt (found here (http://www.courts.state.va.us/forms/district/dc412.pdf)). It's a fill-in-the-blanks form. BadPayer will have to be served paperwork about having to come to court and so forth... and costs for this kind of thing tend to balloon. Anyway, I have contacted brother-the-younger, who has rounded up an official attorney for some advice on going forward with this.

I am, yo, taking notes so that if I have to ever do this again, it'll be cheaper and more certain next time. This is my first BadPayer so it's all very much a learning process.

It's been educational enough so far -- did you know that you can specify the jurisdiction of a Note? Like if I'd been smart enough to hire someone who knew to do that in the text of the note, I could have forced BadPayer to show the fuck up *here* to be in court so that I wouldn't have to hire an out-of-state attorney. I've made a note on that front, you betcha.

[carv1982.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's interesting. I just assumed it was rental properties because I know you run quite a few of them. I actually never realized much money lending really took place outside of banks. I know even less of that topic. Having a bad payer in this context sucks even more, to put it lightly. At least you can evict a tenant.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Yep. You can evict a tenant and, if you're reasonably prompt about the whole thing, your eviction limits the amount that the tenant can get into you for... at least on the rent front. There is no effective way to limit the damages that a tenant can inflict on a property.

We do landlord-tenant evictions (nonpayment of rent, the vast bulk of the time) pretty regularly. We're not too bad at it. We know the routine and the schedule and the appropriate paperwork. Had BadPayer been a tenant, he'd have been evicted along about January.

However, since I'm clueless and since BadPayer has been dangling the prospect of payments before me, I've been letting this drag out. I actually got payments, albeit late ones, for every month up until June. I didn't get shit for June (due June 15) except an email dated 6-20 saying "I put the check in the mail today." The check never arrived. I didn't get shit for July (due July 15), not even a lying-ass email. Further, BadPayer is not responding to the certified letter that I sent dunning him on July 2 and which he received (and signed for) on July 5. I am, honestly, tired of his crap.

The reason that he's called BadPayer, btw, is that it's illegal to publicly state that some fuck owes you money and isn't paying you back. You aren't allowed to call his employer and tell them he ain't paying his debts. You aren't allowed to call him at home except at appropriate hours and you may not call so frequently as to be deemed "harassing". You're not allowed to swear at him, threaten him, or disclose his debt to friends/family. If you have lost contact with your debtor, you may pump his friends/family for his current address / phone number. Your debtor is allowed to not-talk-to-you and/or to request to be contacted solely by mail. You aren't allowed to picket his house or his business, to put up websites about his lame non-paying self, post his payment history on his MySpace profile, or threaten any legal action that you are not actually going to do. Saying, "I've contacted my attorney and will be seeing you in court" is a no-no unless you have actually done that. Finally, your debtor CANNOT GO TO JAIL for borrowing from you and not paying you back. It is NOT A CRIME to borrow money from someone and fail to pay it back. (It is also NOT A CRIME to rent an apartment and not-pay-the-rent. BadTenants do not go to jail. They just get evicted. This is weird because it IS a crime to, y'know, pump gas into your car and drive off without paying... but staying in an apartment and not-paying, that's A-OK.)

Borrowing and failing to make good is a civil matter. You address it in civil court. You get a judgment. You can use the judgment to get your money back, maybe, if the debtor has any money and he or she doesn't declare bankruptcy while you're pissing around with the court system. Declaring bankruptcy wipes out civil claims.