Hello. This is Roger Ghai with Law Offices of Roger Ghai, and I practice bankruptcy law in the Kennesaw, Marietta, and Atlanta metropolitan areas. We take cases from all of these different jurisdictions. I wanted to speak today about a few things that are going on with the creditors, on the creditors side.
As many of you know, the car insurance companies, mortgage companies, credit card companies, and other creditors, including cell phone companies are refraining from trying to collect right now. Now the important part to note about this is that is deceiving and that is sort of an illusion as to how they’re going to expect payment later on down the road.
So for example, some mortgage companies are refraining from trying to collect on the mortgage payment or the insurance companies may text you or call you and say, “Look, you know what? We understand that this is a difficult financial period during this COVID-19 virus, and you’re not going to be required to pay.” The little trick there is that let’s say, for example, you missed two or three payments on your cell phone bill, just to use one example. When they do lift those restrictions on collecting, what the cell phone company is going to do and what the mortgage company is going to do or the car insurance company is going to do, is they’re going to want all of those payments that you missed during this virus, during this crisis, to be paid at one time.
And so my best piece of advice to you is if you’re trying to refrain or not file a bankruptcy case, which if any way you can to avoid filing, go ahead, and you need to try to pay those bills during this period of time. But be prepared, at the end of the crisis, when all of these voluntary collection activities are lifted, that is the creditors are not pursuing collections against you right now, and they’re giving you these grace periods, but once those grace periods are lifted, they’re going to come hard and heavy to collect their money.
So if you have any questions about these rules and different procedures that these companies have, please call my office at 770-792-1000.