obtain judgments

My husband and I have over $140,000 in credit card debts and one small business line of credit. It's a long story of how we got there, and it took a long time and several unfortunate events to get us there. Two months ago we canceled all of our credit cards and sent letters to all of our creditors describing our financial difficulties. Several of them have offered reduced payment/interest plans, but we do not have enough income to commit to any of the plans. Basically, our income barely covers our mortgage payments and our fairly modest living expenses. We very rarely go out to eat or to a movie, and we try not to otherwise spend unnecessary money, but we still don't have enough money in our budget to pay our creditors. Occasionally, my husband is able to work some overtime or pick up some work on the side, and I try to save that money towards possible future negotiations with our creditors, but it's not a large amount and not nearly enough to be able to negotiate with all of our creditors anytime soon. I have spoken with two different consumer credit counseling services and we do not qualify for their programs because we do not have sufficient income to make payments to all of our creditors. Both of them advised me to consult a bankruptcy attorney, but for many reasons, we really want to avoid that route if at all possible. We do know that we owe the debt, and we would like to at least pay part of it. However, if even one of our creditors tries to obtain a judgment and garnish our wages, we would be forced to file bankruptcy because a loss of wages would make us unable to pay our mortgages and living expenses.

What I'm wondering is how long we have before our creditors might start trying to obtain judgments. It took us a long time to accrue that much debt, and it's going to take a long time to save enough funds to try to negotiate with all of them.

Also, I think that my state (California) law gives me the right to send a cease and desist letter to the original creditor, and believe me I would love to do that because with 20 different creditors, it seems that my phone never stops ringing with collection calls. However, I'm wondering if sending that letter will just make them mad and make them more likely to sue us?

Any advice will be much appreciated!