admission by silence

admission by silence letter? Never heard of one.. maybe someone else has.. this is a first for me

Well if not the admission by silence letter then what do I??need to??do to get??these creditors and collection companies (that didn't validate my debt) off my back.

Have you tried dispting it directly with the CB's?

Yes they validated with the credit bureaus.When I ask them directly to validate the information I get no response. Ive sent them 3 request to validate my debt in the past 4 1/2 months each in 45 day interables.

I've never heard of "admission by silence" either??? Is the company that you are sending them to the Original Creditor, or a collection agency?

It's a total of 9 accounts and 4 are the original creditor and 5 are collection.

Quote:

Ok.......I thought the Creditors/CA's have to Validate the debt with the OP, as well, BEFORE reporting to the CB. They had so much time to report back to the OP....correct?

Well, I'm not sure if we have the whole story here. "Admission by silence" is normally a term applied to the defendant, such as when the dunning letter says that if they do not hear from you in 30 days, the debt is considered valid. That's the main issue here. If it is legally valid, and then you come out and say "wait, no it isn't" you had better provide proof, otherwise any reasonable person would just assume you are stalling. It's sort of like if you see your boss treating someone unfairly, and you do not step in and defend the wronged party, you are morally just as guilty as the offending party. That's a kind of admission by silence. (Also why it is said that Injustice cannot happen without the hidden will of us all. I believe that is from the Prophet by Khalil Gibran.)

And, the FCRA says "either directly to the person or through a [CRA]" not necessarily both. If you are disputing through the CRA (and I am assuming Guest did that) then the CRA is required to notify you of the results.

Further:
"Section 32. Admission by silence. - An act or declaration made in the presence and within the hearing or observation of a party who does or says nothing when the act or declaration is such as naturally to call for action or comment if not true, and when proper and possible for him to do so, may be given in evidence against him. (23a)" (Rules of Court - Evidence).

Dear Guest a couple thoughts for you. First, your original creditors are not required to respond to Debt Validation Letters. they don't fall under the definition of a Debt Collector and therefore don't fall under the FDCPA. Your 5 Debt Collectors do. Since they didn't respond to your validation letters (if they were sent in the first 30 days from your first dunning letter) they can't continue to collect on that debt. So for those five, you have a few considerations (1) You can dispute their reporting with the CRAs and include the original dunning letter your debt validation letter AND a copy of your Certified Return Receipt mailing (you did this right?) proving they got your validation request. That's your best option for removing those. (2) Write them a letter explaining that it is illegal for them to continue with collection activity after not responding and each violation can be up to $1000 plus attorney fees and court costs. (3) Realize if they stop collecting they will likely sell the debt and the process will start over; or if they are collecting for the original creditor you may be raising a red flag, which may result in a future lawsuit or they might just reassign the debt to another collector. Finally disputing your 4 debts with the original creditors you need to make sure you are mailing those disputes Certified Return Receipt. You should get a response even if they just say we already investigated this dispute blah blah blah. I agree with the above reply your dispute isn't likely to get any results unless you have some evidence to offer. Hope this helps, let me know if I can help further. (BTW First post ever, anyone let me know if I broke any rules or anything. Thanks)

Chrys henderson- When the credit bureaus ask the Original Creditor and collection companies if a debt is valid, they don't reply with everything that is nessecary to validate the debt. Instead (from my understanding) its simply a yes or no. So when these companies said it was a valid debt, I asked the original creditors and collection companies to prove it with everything that is required to validate the debts. Since there was no response I can only assume that they can't validate the information, therefore it is an invalid debt. And thats when I'm supposed to hit them with the admission by silence which basically states that because of there non compliance with my request for validation it has to be removed from the Credit Bureaus and to be never collected.





jjterminatorjfad- But the original creditors do fall under the Fair Credit Bill Act with states in order to report a debt to the credit bureaus, they must be able to validate that they legitimately opened and maintained the account with statements and original contracts, and if they can't provide ME with that then they can't collect on that debt and it must be removed from the Credit Bureaus.

Guests, if they do that then file a complaint with the FTC. They are required to investigate and take all your info into consideration. See my blog post about this on the DebtCC blog. They are required to provide *proof* of debt.

ANYONE can say "yes you owe me"?! If it were that simple, I could say that you owe me $10,000 and you better start paying me now.

You are confusing the issue with this "admission by silence" which is entirely different.

It is impossible for me to comment accurately on this because I do not know the specifics of this case, but I believe that the creditors are ignoring you because they consider your dispute to be frivolous and irrelevant. And I believe that if the creditor took you to court, your interesting "admission by silence" defense would not be given much consideration by the court.

So it is up to you. Keep in mind that this is my personal opinion and I am not an attorney.

Guest, I do not believe that is correct at all (if you point me differently I'll apologize). The Fair Credit Billing Act protects you from billing errors and doesn't apply to Credit Reporting. The Fair Credit Reporting Act does apply to original creditors; but they DO NOT have to respond or prove their claim to you unless in court as a plaintiff OR defendant. They do have to respond to the disputes you make to the Credit Reporting Agencies regarding their reporting of items on your credit report. You are correct a YES/NO isn't sufficient. You should demand that the Credit Reporting Agencies provide you with the documentation your creditors used to validate their reporting (they are required to do this by law). If you have valid disputes, that you know your "creditors" have incorrectly reported and your disputes are being ignored, you will need to escalate your problem with the FTC and or an attorney.
Regarding the "admission by silence"; this is a real legal concept that you can use to argue your position. However, it is only an argument and does not prove anything. It can be overcome with other evidence, or as in your case with the Credit Reporting agencies, simply ignored. I am an attorney and I'll stick by that.
One final thought for you guest. When writing to your creditors, debt collectors, or Credit Reporting Agencies; don't just say "The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires..." quote the specific part of the law such as "15 U.S.C. ?? 1681e(b) requires that..." You may get a better response. Good Luck!

An admission by silence is more likely to be used against the debtor, when they receive a summons and do not show up in court, unless they were improperly served (which they would have to prove).

In fact, when I was looking in Google about Harvest Credit Management in order to respond to a post, I noticed many lawsuits referring them. Most were debtors trying to have a default judgment overturned and they were denied (because they admitted it was their debt by not coming to court to defend themselves - i.e., admission by silence). Of course it is a real legal concept, but it does not fit into the scenario the original poster told us, as you stated in your clarification.

You can basically use any defense you like in a courtroom when operating pro se, but that doesn't mean it will be given even a moment's consideration by the courts.

Quote: