Debt collectors can contact you about a debt, report it to the credit bureaus, sue you in court, and — if they win a judgment — garnish your wages, freeze your bank account, or place a lien on your property. What they cannot do is harass you, lie to you, threaten actions they can’t legally take, contact you outside the hours federal law allows, or ignore a written request to stop calling. The rules on what debt collectors can and cannot do come mainly from the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and a set of related federal regulations, and they apply to third-party collectors pursuing consumer debts.
What Collectors Are Allowed to Do
Within the limits federal law sets, a collector’s toolbox is real. They can call you, write you, email and text you, report your account to credit bureaus, file a lawsuit, and use the enforcement powers a court judgment unlocks. Each of those steps has its own set of rules, and most of them have hard boundaries the collector cannot cross.
How and When They Can Contact You
A collector can call, write, email, or text you between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. in your local time zone. Contact outside those hours is a violation unless you have agreed to it or a court has authorized it.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1692c – Communication in Connection With Debt Collection
Within five days of first contacting you, the collector must send a written validation notice showing the amount of the debt, the name of the creditor, and a statement that you have 30 days to dispute the debt in writing. If you dispute it in that window, the collector must pause collection until it sends you verification or a copy of any judgment against you.2Federal Trade Commission. Fair Debt Collection Practices Act Text Staying silent during those 30 days is not an admission that you owe the money.
How Often They Can Call
A 2021 federal rule presumes harassment if a collector calls you more than seven times in a seven-day period about a specific debt, or if it calls again within seven days after actually speaking with you about that debt. Voicemails count. If you owe more than one debt to the same collector, the limit is counted separately for each.3Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. When and How Often Can a Debt Collector Call Me on the Phone
Email, Text, and Social Media
Collectors can reach you by email and text message, but every message must include a simple way to opt out of future messages sent to that address or number.4eCFR. 12 CFR Part 1006 – Debt Collection Practices (Regulation F) They cannot email you at a work address your employer provided. They cannot post about your debt on social media in any way that other people can see. A private message asking to connect is allowed only if it discloses that the sender is a debt collector. You can also tell a collector to stop using a specific channel, and it has to comply.
Talking to People Around You
A collector can call a neighbor, relative, or coworker, but only to confirm your address, phone number, or workplace. It must identify itself, cannot reveal that you owe a debt, and generally cannot contact that same person more than once.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1692b – Acquisition of Location Information Once the collector knows you have a lawyer, it has to communicate with the lawyer instead of you.
Send a written request to stop contacting you, and the collector must end all communication except to confirm it’s stopping or to tell you it’s about to take a specific action such as filing suit.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1692c – Communication in Connection With Debt Collection The letter stops the calls; it does not cancel the debt, and the collector can still sue or report the account.
What Collectors Are Not Allowed to Do
Federal law draws hard lines around collector behavior, and those lines apply no matter how much you owe or how old the debt is. Collectors cannot threaten violence, use obscene language, call repeatedly to annoy you, or publish your name on a list of people who won’t pay. They cannot place calls without identifying themselves.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1692d – Harassment or Abuse
They also cannot lie or mislead. The prohibited tactics include:
- Misstating how much you owe or the legal status of the debt.
- Threatening to sue, garnish wages, or have you arrested when they cannot or will not.
- Pretending a letter is from an attorney or a government agency.
- Sending papers designed to look like court filings when they aren’t.
- Telling you that unpaid consumer debt is a crime. It’s a civil matter.
Threatening any action the collector doesn’t actually intend to take, or isn’t legally allowed to take, is itself a violation.2Federal Trade Commission. Fair Debt Collection Practices Act Text
Reporting the Debt to Credit Bureaus
A collector can report an unpaid account to the major credit bureaus. Once reported, a collection item stays on your credit file for seven years plus 180 days, measured from the date you originally fell behind — not from the date the collector picked up the debt. Selling the debt or opening a new tradeline does not restart that clock.7United States Code. 15 USC Title 15 – Chapter 41 – Consumer Credit Protection – Subchapter III – Credit Reporting Agencies
If you dispute the entry, the credit bureau has 30 days to investigate. If the debt cannot be verified, the entry has to come off. While a dispute is pending, the collector must mark the account as disputed in its reporting, and knowingly reporting false information is a separate federal violation.
Suing You in Court
When contact and credit reporting don’t get results, a collector can file a lawsuit. You’ll receive a summons and a complaint stating how much you owe, where the debt came from, and the legal basis for the claim.
Federal law limits where the case can be filed. For a real-estate-related debt like a mortgage, the suit has to be filed where the property sits. For every other kind of consumer debt, the collector can only sue in the judicial district where you signed the original contract or where you currently live.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1692i – Legal Actions by Debt Collectors Filing far away to make it hard for you to show up is itself an FDCPA violation.
You typically have 20 to 30 days after being served to file a written response, depending on the court. Miss that window and the collector can ask for a default judgment, meaning the court sides with the collector without hearing anything from you. A default judgment opens the door to wage garnishment, bank levies, and property liens. Even if you owe the money, filing a response preserves your ability to negotiate, challenge the amount, or raise defenses.
Garnishing Your Wages After a Judgment
With a court judgment in hand, a collector can obtain a garnishment order that tells your employer to withhold part of each paycheck. Federal law caps the amount at the lesser of:
- 25% of your disposable earnings for the pay period, or
- The amount by which your disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, which comes out to $217.50 per week.
Whichever number is smaller is the maximum the collector can take.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1673 – Restriction on Garnishment Disposable earnings are what’s left after legally required deductions like federal income tax and Social Security. If your weekly disposable pay is $217.50 or less, none of it can be garnished.10U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #30 – Wage Garnishment Protections of the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA)
A few states — Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina — bar wage garnishment for ordinary consumer debts entirely, though garnishment for child support, taxes, and student loans still applies. Other states cap garnishment below the federal ceiling. When state and federal rules differ, the one that protects more of your paycheck wins.
Freezing and Levying Your Bank Account
A judgment creditor can also serve a levy or garnishment order on your bank. The bank freezes the funds so you can’t withdraw them, then hands over the amount the order specifies. How long the freeze lasts depends on state law.
Some deposits are protected. Federal law shields Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, veterans’ benefits, federal employee retirement, and railroad retirement payments even after they land in your account.11eCFR. 31 CFR Part 212 – Garnishment of Accounts Containing Federal Benefit Payments When a garnishment order arrives, the bank has to check the account for direct deposits of these benefits and automatically protect them. If protected and unprotected money is mixed together, only the unprotected portion can be turned over.
Placing Liens on Your Property
A judgment lets a collector record a lien against real estate you own by filing paperwork with the county recorder where the property sits. The lien attaches to the title, so you can’t sell or refinance without paying the judgment off first. Any buyer or lender running a title search will see it.
In some situations, a collector can go further with a writ of execution, a court order directing a sheriff or marshal to seize non-exempt personal property and sell it at auction. Vehicles, valuable jewelry, and second homes are common targets. Sale proceeds pay the sale costs and any prior liens first, then the judgment.
Most states offer a homestead exemption that shields some or all of the equity in your primary residence from judgment creditors. The amount varies widely by state, from a few thousand dollars up to unlimited protection subject to acreage limits. Homestead exemptions don’t block mortgages, tax liens, or child support.
Judgment liens run for a set number of years, typically 5 to 20 depending on the state, and most states let the creditor renew before expiration. A lien can follow a property for decades until the debt is paid or the lien is released.
Old Debts and the Statute of Limitations
Every debt has a statute of limitations, the window during which a collector can sue to recover it. For credit card and medical debts, the window is usually three to six years, depending on the state and the type of debt. Once it closes, the debt is time-barred.
A collector cannot sue you, or threaten to sue you, on a time-barred debt.12Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 12 CFR 1006.26 – Collection of Time-Barred Debts The debt itself doesn’t vanish. Collectors can still call and write asking for payment, and the account can still show up on your credit report if it’s inside the separate seven-year-plus-180-day reporting window.
Be careful about how you respond to contact about old debts. Making even a partial payment, or acknowledging the debt in writing, can restart the statute of limitations in some states and reopen the door to a lawsuit.13Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Can Debt Collectors Collect a Debt That’s Several Years Old Moving to a state with a longer limitations period can also change the timeline.
Federal Debts Play by Different Rules
Debts owed to the federal government, mainly student loans and taxes, follow their own rules and give the government more leverage than a private collector has.
For defaulted federal student loans, the Department of Education can garnish up to 15% of your disposable pay through administrative wage garnishment, without going to court.14eCFR. 34 CFR Part 34 – Administrative Wage Garnishment You get notice and a chance to request a hearing before garnishment starts, but no judge has to sign off.
The Treasury Department can also intercept your federal tax refund through the Treasury Offset Program to cover delinquent federal debts including defaulted student loans and unpaid taxes. You’ll get advance notice.15Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Tax Refund Offset If you filed jointly and only your spouse owes the debt, you can file IRS Form 8379 (Injured Spouse Allocation) to recover your share.
What You Can Do if a Collector Breaks the Rules
If a collector violates the FDCPA — harasses you, lies about the debt, calls at prohibited times, or uses any of the deceptive tactics above — you can sue in federal or state court. If you win, you can recover actual damages for financial harm or emotional distress, statutory damages of up to $1,000 per lawsuit even without proof of harm, and your attorney’s fees and court costs.16Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1692k – Civil Liability
You can also file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or your state attorney general’s office. Both have enforcement authority over debt collectors, and a complaint costs you nothing.