I have a daughter who was 15 at the time who, placed into a hospital for a physiological evaluation in May. She was originally brought to another hospital by Police ambulance because she was endangering herself and others. As part of this treatment the hospital transferred her to South Oaks Hospital for an evaluation. At the time of admission I was gainfully employed and insured. Due to the amount of time the hospital and issues required me to be away from work for meetings I was fired while my daughter was hospitalized.
I ended up on unemployment for 9 months, then 3 months with no income before finding a job. Immediately following my beginning to work, at a salary 40% less than before I received a notice from Rubin & Rothman, on behalf of South Oaks Hospital attempting to collect a debt of approximately $5,000 for treatment of my daughter. I finally agreed to send $50.00 a month and then up the payments to $100.00 after I got back on my feet.
When this agreement was reached I was under the impression all was okay. Just days after the payment agreement was reached on the phone my wife and I both received a letter to sign which stated that the $50.00 payment would be effective for 6 months and then we would have to re-negotiate payments. Upon my raising objections over the language of the letter I was told that this was a formality and that they were only permitted to agree to 6 months payments at a time. We signed and returned the forms.
Well 6 months passed and then I was contacted about higher payments. I was still financially strapped and within a couple of months started to make $100.00 payments. Over the past month we have been threatened with garnishment, to the amount of over $900.00 a month. We were mislead at the beginning of all of this and now once again.
We received a letter about 6 weeks ago, allegedly a subpoena asking for all kinds of financial information. But the letter clearly stated that if we called them we could forego the answering of all the questions on this form. We did contact them well within the two weeks.in the meantime they still had sent the same form to both of our employers and were getting the same type of information from them. After we sent our pay information they have now decided that we must pay over $900.00 a month or garnishment proceedings will commence and even more will be taken from our paychecks, great negotiations.
They have yet to inquire about our other obligations and actually told us as well as my boss that they don't care, they want their money and will get it by whatever means they can. Even after being told that this payment would force us to file bankruptcy, again their comment was we don't care. I was told by my boss that he was told by Ms Johnson on the phone that as of last week they have gone to the Marshall to begin garnishment proceedings against us.
If anyone has any suggestions on how to handle these people please respond. I do not want to go the bankruptcy route but the first set of short paychecks will leave me little choice because I refuse to take the kind of harassment from other creditors because of my absolute inability to make payments because of this $900.00 a month garnishment they are trying to enforce.
Most of our dealings have been with a Ms. Johnson of the Rubin & Rothman office and all I can say is I sure hope it's true that whatever goes around comes around, whether in this life or after is fine with me it just won't be soon enough
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