Fresh off their great Scrooge-like work on the bankruptcy bill, the credit companies are back at it again - now they are
illegally dunning our soldiers:
Sgt. John J. Savage III, an Army reservist, was about to climb onto a troop transport plane for a flight to Iraq from Fayetteville, N.C., when his wife called with alarming news: "They're foreclosing on our house." Sergeant Savage recalled, "There was not a thing I could do; I had to jump on the plane and boil for 22 hours."
He had reason to be angry. A longstanding federal law strictly limits the ability of his mortgage company and other lenders to foreclose against active-duty service members. But Sergeant Savage's experience was not unusual. Though statistics are scarce, court records and interviews with military and civilian lawyers suggest that Americans heading off to war are sometimes facing distracting and demoralizing demands from financial companies trying to collect on obligations that, by law, they cannot enforce.
Shocking isn't it?
Update [2005-3-27 23:1:38 by Armando]: And it is happening a lot more now. Why?
One reason they are surfacing in unlikely places is the Pentagon's increased reliance on Reserve and National Guard units that do not hail from traditional military towns, said Lt. Col. Barry Bernstein, the judge advocate general for the South Carolina National Guard. When these units are called up, he said, their members find themselves facing creditors and courts that may never have dealt with the relief act.
That's why.