Legal Debt Services - Consolidation & Negotiation
There are many legal debt services and programs that exist for the sake of giving the consumer an alternative to either defaulting on bills, or worse, declaring bankruptcy. The option that someone goes with will ultimately depend on a number of different factors.
Depending on how much is owed, how far behind they are on their bills, and what their financial prospects look like going forward, they may want to consider some kind of legal debt services or programs in order to satisfy their debts.
One such option is debt consolidation / credit counseling. This is a program sponsored in part by the credit card companies, and often involves a non-profit organization as a facilitator in helping the consumer pay off his / her active credit card debt. On a debt consolidation or credit counseling program, creditors are willing to make concessions on interest rates (and often monthly minimum payments) in exchange for the agreement that the consumer will group all of his or her credit card payments into one consolidated monthly payment. This payment is made to the non-profit organization, which then disperses the portions of the payment in fixed amounts to each of the consumer's creditors. As the consumer makes a monthly payment through this legal debt service, the balances on these accounts lower until they're paid in full.