Debt Collection

One in three adults in this country has a debt that has been turned over to a private collection agency. Thousands of debtors are arrested and jailed each year because they owe money.

Many people with medical debt may qualify for a program called Charity Care that provides assistance to those who cannot afford to pay their medical bills. An NJP attorney talks with KIRO’s Jesse Jones about the program. > Watch Video

Attorney General Bob Ferguson notified the Washington Legislature his office is requesting legislation to establish a program to address traffic-based financial obligations that does not penalize people for their poverty. In a December 1, 2017 Report, required by law, the AG’s Office proposes a system to consolidate traffic debt, owed courts in multiple jurisdictions, into […]

More than a decade after Yvette Harris’s 1997 Mitsubishi was repossessed, she is still paying off her car loan.

The most commonly charged crime in Washington shouldn’t be a crime at all, the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union argues in a new report. Taxpayers spend more than $40 million a year to prosecute cases of third-degree driving with a suspended license, the organization found.

In a victory for indigent disabled people throughout the state, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that federal law prohibits courts from ordering defendants to pay court imposed Legal Financial Obligations if the person’s only source of income is social security disability benefits. The court added: “…A person's present inability to meet their own basic needs is not only relevant, but crucial to determining whether paying LFOs would create a manifest hardship.” City of Richland v. Wakefield.

NJP CLEAR and King County Debt Clinic advocates contacted the WA Attorney General’s Office Wing Luke Civil Rights Unit after seeing a pattern of egregious abuse in used car sales involving primarily Spanish speaking clients statewide. Abuse of low-income individuals in used car sales is widespread and has serious consequences for the car buyer seeking affordable and reliable transportation for work, and also creates dangerous situations for the clients, their families, and the driving public when cars malfunction on the road.

Attorney Leslie Owen greeted her client with good news last week: A fine for driving with a suspended license had been dropped in Grant County, wiping out $1,500 of what Teresa Nisbet owed. The two celebrated the latest step out of a hole Nisbet had dug with credit cards, payday loans, drug use and bad luck. Nisbet recalls how she felt at the bottom of that hole: “I can’t see the light. I have no hope.”
 

LEBANON, Tenn. — The last time Kenneth Seay lost his job, at an industrial bakery that offered health insurance and Christmas bonuses, it was because he had been thrown in jail for legal issues stemming from a revoked driver’s license. Same with the three jobs before that.