Can you go to jail for not paying credit card debt?

You won't go to jail, but your credit score will be eventually ruined. That affects a lot of things, including the cost of your car insurance (yes), and could possibly prevent you from being offered a job. Also, you'll have debt collectors hounding you day and night -- if you don't get sued instead, in which case you could have could have your wages garnished.

Pay a lawyer $500 or so to handle your bankruptcy. And you're out!

Not that easy. Chapter 7 requires a trustee to look at your assets and determine what can be liquidated to pay off the debit. Chapter 13 involves a payment plan. No way do you just pay a lawyer $500 and get a fresh start. Also, bankruptcy filing remains on your record for up to ten years.

If you don't pay your credit card debt you will get sued. If you ignore the summons you can go to jail. You are not going to jail for not paying your debts, you are going to jail for ignoring the legal process.

How about being an honest person and following through on the promise that you made on the credit card agreement to pay for your purchases?

is that an option?

goforit99 wrote:

Not that easy. Chapter 7 requires a trustee to look at your assets and determine what can be liquidated to pay off the debit. Chapter 13 involves a payment plan. No way do you just pay a lawyer $500 and get a fresh start. Also, bankruptcy filing remains on your record for up to ten years.

You do not know how it works in the hood, white boy.

Not responding to a lawsuit just makes them side in plaintiffs favor.

Blah Blah. wrote:

If you don't pay your credit card debt you will get sued. If you ignore the summons you can go to jail. You are not going to jail for not paying your debts, you are going to jail for ignoring the legal process.

You can be sued, but most likely your debt will be sold to scavengers. If you get sued by a scavenger and hire a lawyer to go to court for you, (you stay home) they cannot ask you questions, and without your testimony, they will likely not be able to prove you owe the debt because the original creditors need to be present for proof yet don't care if the scavangers get paid ir not.

Discuss has two Ss. wrote:

You do not know how it works in the hood, white boy.

You're right, thankfully. You can stay in the hood and work the system as best you can and we'll stay outside the hood and work the system in our (white boy) way. Pretty sure we get the better deal there.

It's called "Unsecured lending" for a reason. The bank has loaned you money to make a purchase. The bank has essentially made a "promise to pay" to the merchant. Since there is no collateral, the bank is taking a risk however the risk is still profitable for them since most people are honest and pay them back under the terms of the cardholder agreement. They also make a lot of money from merchant fees.With cheques, you have confirmed that the funds will be in your account by the time it clears. Totally different ball game, hence the reason some people (rarely) may be imprisoned. Highly unlikely, however.

North of the Wall wrote:

Write a bunch of bad checks, you go to jail.

Run up credit card debt and don't pay... What happens besides a bad credit score?

Racy Much? wrote:

Discuss has two Ss. wrote:

You do not know how it works in the hood, white boy.

You're right, thankfully. You can stay in the hood and work the system as best you can and we'll stay outside the hood and work the system in our (white boy) way. Pretty sure we get the better deal there.

Except we get the credit card debt to disappear, white boy.

You've made some horrible assumptions in that question, and left out 1 key word that could tie those cases together and make the answer apparent: Fraud.

People can and do go to jail for check fraud. It's not likely, but it is possible. And by check fraud I mean what you mean when you say 'writing bad checks'. Dont believe what your grocery store check out sign says about prosecuting you for bad checks. Sure they will kick it to the DA but the DA has better things to do than try and get you convicted. Most likely the will tell the grocery store its a civil matter and they should sue you in small claims. Even if you do that a lot of times, you still won't go to jail--you will lose your checking account and not be able to open a new one in any other bank--there's a black list of bad check writers and that's how that gets enforced. Very few people go to jail for check fraud.

People can and do go to jail for credit card fraud. It's even less likely but it is possible. And by credit card fraud I don't mean identify theft. I mean taking out 80 credit cards in your name, getting cash advances/items you can sell for cash/etc. and then never paying the credit card bills and either trying to file bankruptcy or just ignoring collectors. This is even less likely than going to jail for check fraud, but still possible.

So in conclusion both types of fraud are crimes, but no prosecutor give's a shit enough to actually prosecute.

If the credit card banks that you defaulted on take you to court and get a judgement, that leads to a whole new set of issues. Being a deadbeat, you'll probably ignore the judgement and then the CC bank will garnish your wages. You'll get your paycheck one day and it could be 75% smaller than you expect. At that point you'll have to quit your job and get a new one and that's the trend that will develop as you try to escape the garnishments.

Or, you can declare bankruptcy as mentioned above. In the old days there used to be debtor's prisons where they sent the deadbeats. It's amazing to me that you could steal a car and end up in prison for theft. Today, you rack up tens of thousands of dollars in debt don't pay it back and it's no big deal. Stealing is stealing.

The previous commentators are absolutely right. Bad credit score can influence a lot of spheres of our lives. That's why it is better to restore buying all needed things here https://cataloguesforbadcredit.co.uk/ Every purchase at the catalogue if considered in your credit score and may improve it.

I don't think it's that serious. I had problems with the payment of past debt to the Bank and now I just have a bad credit history, so the banks for me the way is closed. But I'm in if you need additional money, turn to the website https://zenithloans.com . Here do not check credit history and give loan to everyone who needs help.