Personal Debt Recovery

Personal debt recovery can be very complicated because of the social and emotional elements related to family bonds or bonds of friendship. However, the debt collection tools available in this are usually the same as they are for commercial debt collection. So what are some examples of personal debt collection?

1) Allowed a friend to move in and gave them a rent holiday.

This is a very common scenario where in order to help out a friend, you choose to allow to live in your house as a tenant and give them a rent holiday. However, this can start to become seriously problematic when having lived in your house for three months you discover that they are still unwilling to pay any rent and that they now owe you $5,000.00 in unpaid rent. In a situation like this you may have to look at getting a debt collector involved to recover this money from them.

2) Lent a family member a car.

You might have lent a car to your daughter while she was pregnant and during this time she uses the car so that she can have transport and get to the hospital later on. During the pregnancy, your daughter’s boyfriend starts using the car and comes to think of it as belonging to him. He then refuses to give it back saying that it was a gift from you to your daughter and his family. The car is worth $20,000.00 and you now no longer have any access to it. You could send a debt collection letter appropriately drafted by a lawyer in order to look at getting this property back.

3) Lent a teenager a credit card

You may have lent your teenager a credit card which they used to enter into a mobile phone contract. You suddenly discover a $2,000.00 bill next month for data downloads on the mobile phone. How are you going to recover this money?

All of these situations require tact and delicacy, but the tools of debt collection and recovery will be the same. In particular, a debt collection letter would be appropriate in all of these situations.