Fresno Bankruptcy Attorney Helps You Stop Creditor Harassment

Experienced California attorney works to fend off constant phone calls and other collection efforts

When you fall deep into debt, even in spite of your best efforts to manage your bills, you may find yourself facing repeated phone calls and other communications from creditors and their agents, trying to collect the money you owe them. Even if you manage to scrape together enough money to make a partial payment, they may continue to call you for more. Gates Law Group, A Professional Corporation has helped Californians stop creditor harassment for the past four decades.

Astute law firm uses bankruptcy to fight high-pressure tactics

Upon the filing of a bankruptcy petition, the law imposes an automatic stay that stops most or all of your creditors from trying to collect their debts outside of the bankruptcy process. The bankruptcy law does recognize some exceptions. The automatic stay doesn’t apply to debts incurred after you file for bankruptcy. Debtors might lose or never get an automatic stay if they have a bankruptcy history that suggests they abused the system, such as if they had at least one bankruptcy that was dismissed within the previous year. If that happens, we can still get the automatic stay reinstated if we convince the court that our client wasn’t guilty of bad faith conduct. Creditors may also file a motion in the bankruptcy court to lift the automatic stay, but they will need to show the court a good reason before it will grant the motion, and our clients can count on our opposing it.

Thorough lawyer works to counter violations of the automatic stay

If you have an automatic stay in place but you continue to get harassed by debt collectors, there are several measures that your bankruptcy attorney can take to stop it. We can:

• Notify the violator — In many cases, the debt collector is simply unaware of the bankruptcy or of the fact that it can’t continue its activities during the automatic stay. The first, and often the only necessary step is to inform the creditor or bill collector of the bankruptcy and the automatic stay.
• Inform the bankruptcy court — If the creditor or collector continues to harass you, despite knowing that the automatic stay applies to it, we will ask the court to sanction that party for willfully violating the automatic stay.
• Sue the violator — If other efforts are insufficient, and the creditor’s conduct injures you, we can file a separate suit against them for your damages.

We do everything we can to make sure that our bankruptcy clients enjoy the benefits of the legal protections an automatic stay affords them.

Contact a dedicated California debtor defense lawyer for a consultation

If you face harassment from creditors and collection agencies, Gates Law Group, A Professional Corporation, can help you. Please call 559-432-9944 or contact us online to schedule a consultation. We serve clients from our main office in Fresno and locations in Paso Robles and Visalia.