By 
While your debt settlement company is in negotiations with creditors, one ammunition tool used on your behalf is the personal circumstance that brought you to the program in the first place. This is what we refer to as his Difficulty.
At one point, his signing agent asked him the question “what in your life led you to the point where you felt our services could help you?” Many consumers only view a large amount of debt or high interest rates as a hardship worth getting all the help they need, and in some cases, total debt forgiveness. The truth is that no court in this country will accept any of those reasons as a hardship due to the fact that almost everyone is in the same financial situation. With my clients, I chose to define a DIFFICULTY as sad, depressing but TRUE stories. There should be something like:
• Significant decrease in income
• Divorce that resulted in financial hardship
• Job’s lose
• Significant expenses for family care of the elderly
• Significant expenses for children (including tuition)
• Limited Fixed Income with Insufficient Funds to Cover Basic Expenses
• Significant medical expenses
• Legal action resulting in financial hardship
• Job relocation resulting in financial hardship
• Tax problems resulting in financial hardship
• Death in the family resulting in financial hardship
• Accident resulting in increased responsibilities and inability to cover basic expenses
There must be something in their recent history besides high interest rates that made their financial life difficult, so as a rule, we insist on sad, depressing but TRUE stories. Many times, one of our Customer Service Representatives will be in casual conversation with a consumer reviewing their account and learn that the customer has had a death in the family, a major accident that turned into major surgery, or some tragic experience that resulted in a financial downward spiral.
At one point, he had been working with a client for a twenty-month period when, out of the blue, he brought up the deaths of five family members over a three-year period prior to and during his onboarding into the debt relief program. He had been so busy managing damage for so long that he hadn’t considered sharing a loss as great as his difficulty. This is not uncommon with people. Maybe it’s pride or a sense of responsibility in us.
The act of living itself is a challenge and no one will make it out of life alive. So don’t be afraid to share with your representative the negative things in life that got you to this point of overwhelming credit card debt. This is something negative that we can turn into a positive with nothing to be ashamed of. Not a few of us have experienced this same obstacle in our own lives. We understand and we are here to help.