Collection Agency Suing me over Wife's Medical Bills

This morning a sheriff's officer came and posted a summons for myself and my wife. The summons was for a collection agency that is suing "us" for $2852 in medical expenses.
She was paying the hospital for the bill every month for the last five years whatever she could. I'm sure she may have just missed two months together and now the collection agency is in charge. She must have not made payments or communicated with the collection agency. Now they are suing "us"
I do not understand why I would be sued. I WAS NOT married at the time when the expenses where incurred. If someone could shed some light on my situation, I would appreciate it. Possibly a course of action that I would need to take. I thought about calling the lawyer and possibly working out a payment plan or reduction of the total if it is paid in full. However, I thought I would consult with the board here as this is one of the only places I know where reasonable people give answers. Thank you for your time.

Go over to creditboard and post under the Medical debt forum. WhyChat is very helpful there.

You need a debt collection attorney to look for fdcpa violations

Go to the NACA website , most will evaluate your situation at no charge and explain your tights and what laws may have been violated

SUCKISSTAPLES said: You need a debt collection attorney to look for fdcpa violations

Go to the NACA website , most will evaluate your situation at no charge and explain your tights and what laws may have been violated

sorry had to save a copy before edit since it is so funny. I hate the droid word changes too.

So do you think they will want to see his tights or will a description be sufficient.

SUCKISSTAPLES said: Go to the NACA website , most will evaluate your situation at no charge and explain your tights

I think if my wife found me wearing tights, I'd need more than the NACA on my side. But I definitely would have some explaining to do.

wife's picture would attract more help..

jahnke771 said: this is one of the only places I know where reasonable people give answers.

Well, so much for that theory.

dcg9381 said: I miss CodeName

Tights made you think of CodeName???

That's a whole different side of him the reporter must have glossed over.

After four years I learned to use the edit function.

jahnke771 said: This morning a sheriff's officer came and posted a summons for myself and my wife. The summons was for a collection agency that is suing "us" for $2852 in medical expenses.
She was paying the hospital for the bill every month for the last five years whatever she could. I'm sure she may have just missed two months together and now the collection agency is in charge. She must have not made payments or communicated with the collection agency. Now they are suing "us"
I do not understand why I would be sued. I WAS NOT married at the time when the expenses where incurredWell, you are now at the time they are suing you.

jahnke771 said: Will someone please take this thread down? I'm done with this site.
Why? You received good advice from ZenNuts and SIS. This thread has only been live 5.5 hours at this point, you haven't even given it a full day. Do you think every knowledgeable person is obligated to login hourly and reply to all threads immediately? You've been here more than four years, you should know what to expect from a public forum. There's no guarantee of problem-solving on demand ... [/rant]

I expect others will offer advice as time goes by. One obvious question is whether, before today, the CA ever mailed notices to you, or to you and your wife jointly, or tried to otherwise contact you directly regarding this matter ...

I had a medical provider send me to collections over $15 one time. They claimed that I had blown off a year of bills.

After I threatened them a bit, the collections supervisor for the company admitted that their records were a disaster and half the people they sent to collections didn't belong there. This after a week of blowing me off and telling me I destroyed my perfect FICO over $15.

LAwoodtiger said: pietromoon said: umcsom said: After pointing out to OP that maybe he should be paying his bills instead of staying at deluxe rooms at the Bellagio, one of the most expensive hotels in Vegas I got this PM.

Thanks for not posting anything relevant to my thread. By the way, go f*** yourself.

the PM was not censored. Then OP went and cried to the mods and got my post taken down.

It was a fund raising trip

Aren't all Vegas trips?for the girls, yea...

On a more serious note I always thought that in general you aren't legally responsible for your spouses debts. Have I just misunderstood that or is it something that just varies from state to state? I assume that a judgement could still be used to seize joint property (depending on what the property was?) or is that how the OP is involved in the lawsuit now?

ZenNUTS said: Go over to creditboard and post under the Medical debt forum. WhyChat is very helpful there.

seconded...whychat is amazing.

and fwiw, there are a lot of people with pristine credit and finances who have problems with medical collections for purely random reasons.

jahnke771 said: Oh, I did not know about the creditboard. I will go ahead and do that. Thank you.

The OP's Creditboards thread said: I thought I would consult with the board here as this is one of the only places I know where reasonable people give answers.

I am amused.

jahnke771 said: Will someone please take this thread down? I'm done with this site.
In lieu of payment for FWF advice, the public pillory must continue. It's in the fine print.

civ2k1 said: Quoted for posterity in case OP figures out how to use the edit feature...

jahnke771 said: This morning a sheriff's officer came and posted a summons for myself and my wife. The summons was for a collection agency that is suing "us" for $2852 in medical expenses.
She was paying the hospital for the bill every month for the last five years whatever she could. I'm sure she may have just missed two months together and now the collection agency is in charge. She must have not made payments or communicated with the collection agency. Now they are suing "us"
I do not understand why I would be sued. I WAS NOT married at the time when the expenses where incurred. If someone could shed some light on my situation, I would appreciate it. Possibly a course of action that I would need to take. I thought about calling the lawyer and possibly working out a payment plan or reduction of the total if it is paid in full. However, I thought I would consult with the board here as this is one of the only places I know where reasonable people give answers. Thank you for your time.

LOL!

umcsom said: After pointing out to OP that maybe he should be paying his bills instead of staying at deluxe rooms at the Bellagio, one of the most expensive hotels in Vegas I got this PM.

Thanks for not posting anything relevant to my thread. By the way, go f*** yourself.

the PM was not censored. Then OP went and cried to the mods and got my post taken down.

I understand these finance forums. I could care less if I get "red" for a post. It's not going to make or break my day. I'm sure you sit at home whacking off to every extension of the little green flag for one of your posts. That's great.
Yes, I told you to f*** yourself. Sure, I asked the mod to take down my post. I was frustrated by some stalker bringing up irrelevant information to my thread. I let my emotions get the best of me. Instead of helping me, you belittled me. Thanks.
I appreciate the people with helpful responses. I'm still confused on what to do. I have received a starting point to gather information. I also noticed other posters questioning the idea of being married is your debt now. So all is not lost.

Crazytree said: Posting PMs is lame.If can't be said in front of everyone, don't say it. Unless it's private info intended for one party only.

OP needs to show that he indeed wants help and take a ribbing with a bit of grown up humor. It would be a completely different reception if he just owe up to his mistake. FWF had gone quite gone far in the past for complete strangers on the net if they just show a bit of humility and wellingness to owe up to past mistakes.

ZenNUTS said: glxpass said: As you said, we will have to disagree about this.With due respect. I could not disagree more. Is a insult via PM more protected than say face to face insult or, a hand written note? Yet I doubt many would see recalling a in your face insult to the world or revealing such a note an ethical violation with the objection that, wait, it's intended for the recipent only?

ETA: If you or anyone is interested in the topic, google "posting private messages" (using the quotes). You'll see some cases where it's in violation of a particular forum's TOU, others where it's not. Regardless, most people take a dim view of it.This isn't the first time this issue has been discussed on FW and I disagree on the "most" part as well. http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/off-topic/1021217/
The rudeness and immaturity of an insult is one thing. How it's handled depends on the context. It's interesting that the examples you used, "face-to-face", "hand-written note", are generally between two people, not in a public arena. I read the thread you linked to. While the person who was insulted complained about the rude PM and while people could guess the author of it, at least the person didn't reveal the author directly. And the situation was handled with some humor, too.

Talking about "protected" for a moment, the offended party was also complaining that the insulting PM was allowed, but his forum post that the PM author complained about was deleted. Ask yourself or maybe a moderator why this occurred. I suspect part of the answer is that while insults aren't justified in any context, what is subject to moderation in a forum is different than what's subject to moderation in a PM.

Another aspect is that keeping things on a PM level at least gives the chance for resolving the problem. Making it public, and revealing who wrote the PM, just escalates the situation. And that's exactly what happened, with the PM recipient adding more insults in subsequent posts. Instead of a discussion that centered around the actual topic, the thread has contained mostly opinions about the OP and what kind of person he is.

I gave you the search term linky to find links that discuss this same issue about posting PMs, not debating about their rudeness. If you want to disagree "more", that's fine. I'll just say we disagree and leave it at that.

Edit: re-phrased a bit.