No Justice for us Good Tax-paying Folk

If you want to learn how to screw your landlord out of his or her money, read on for some tips. I've learned a lot over the past 18 months from my deadbeat ex-tenant, who continues to get away with not paying me a dime despite the court order that she do so.

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if someone breaks a lease, takes money from you, never pays their taxes, repeatedly commits perjury, doesn't show for trial, lies to the court about her whereabouts that day, and files a fraudulent bankruptcy petition (also chock full of lies) to stop a wage garnishment—the justice system ultimately errs on the deadbeat loser's side.

It's been nine months since the Court awarded a judgment in my favor. I haven't seen one dime from my ex-tenant the loser.

Thanks to the loser defendant's repeated schemes designed to get out of paying me, I find myself spending more time and money on this case. And unfortunately, it ain't over yet.

For one thing, she lied under oath throughout our case, and got away with it. She lied about her employment status and provided a false residential address on her responses to interrogatories, which are in written form but are signed under oath and penalty of perjury. She didn't show up for trial, then had the gall to write a letter to the court three weeks later saying she'd been called out of town on a "family emergency" on the day of trial. Accompanied by that letter was her request for a new trial, a request that she'd missed the deadline for by 10 days.

The problem is that the judge that reviewed the letter and illegal motion for a new trial must've been sleeping, because he/she called for a hearing, in complete disregard for proper procedure (and law). Never mind that I'd won the judgment, and the judgment was absolutely final as of ten days post-trial. Because some judge or clerk wasn't paying attention, I had to go back to court during Christmas week, to appear for the defendant's motion.

Guess what? The defendant did not show to argue her own motion. The judge literally laughed at the absurdity of us being there at all. (Why couldn't this have been the judge who reviewed the ludicrous motion?) My attorney and I were walking down the aisle away from the bench, and the judge couldn't stop laughing. We never should have been there that day.

So you'd think that would be it, right?

Wrong. It's difficult to get an uncooperative defendant to confess assets. When mine didn't do that (as ordered by the court), my lawyer had to remind her. So, last November, a full 60 days after the deadline, she responded to interrogatories yet again. And she lied yet again—claiming all her bank accounts (3 separate checking accounts) had a zero balance, and that she owns virtually no furniture, no clothing, no car, has no retirement accounts, etc.

So then I had to file a motion to compel her to come to court, bring specific financial records, and orally confess her assets to me in front of a judge. This was scheduled to happen on April 20 of this year.

Meanwhile, I had been unable to garnish the defendant's wages because I had to get in line behind the Comptroller of Maryland. Seems my deadbeat ex-tenant had a bad habit of not paying taxes. When I checked the court record, I found five tax liens against her, dating back six years. She somehow evaded paying over $60,000 in taxes. Most of that was written off in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy that was discharged on behalf of the defendant just three years ago.

The defendant had an attorney buddy call my lawyer early on in our case. This two-bit lawyer never entered an appearance and therefore couldn't legally represent her. But that didn't stop him from calling my attorney and lying about the defendant's employment status. He told my attorney, "You'll never get a dime out of her. She's unemployed. And she'll just file bankruptcy again." My lawyer was worried when he heard that, and so was I.

But I'd done my own investigation and found out about the defendant's previous bankruptcy. She had to wait eight years to be eligible for bankruptcy again. Great! Maybe there was hope yet.

Then later on, again based on hours and hours of my own investigation over several days that included Labor Day weekend last year, I tracked down her employer and found out she'd lied under oath about being unemployed. (That was also when I found out that she'd lied about being out of town on the day of our trial.) The garnishment would start as soon as her tax levy was paid off. Unfortunately, I lost my job two weeks later.

I did the math and found out that my garnishment would start in mid-April of this year. I was looking forward to collecting 25% of her wages every month until she left that job, which was a contract due to expire on June 30 of this year. I was due to collect just a few thousand dollars this way—only a portion of the judgment—but it would be a start.

In March, I did a little more investigating and discovered that the defendant had purchased a $38,000 Lincoln at the Ford dealership and had upgraded from her $1,300/month apartment to a new 2,100-square foot $2,200/month luxury town house. Her income was still the same. She still was paying a dime on her mounting student loans. She still owed me over $25,000.

And yet she was living in the lap of luxury, conning more suckers into signing leases with her and loaning her money that they'll never see a dime of. (As of March her credit rating had sunk to 466. She used her mom to co-sign the car loan application with her.)

On April 20 I gave up a day's pay and $75 for a ZipCar rental to drive up to Maryland for our court date. It was a nightmare. I was on the docket for "orals," which were supposed to start at 1:15PM. When I walked in at 12:45, a long-winded case was dragging out. I could tell it wasn't about to come to a close.

Finally, at 1:15, the judge stood up, announced she had to go get something to eat, and would be back within a half hour. She said that since there was no food in the building, she had to go off site and might take longer. I was worried because I knew I had to be out of there by 3:30PM to make it to class that evening.

So I sat on the hard wooden pew as the clock ticked off an hour. I'd spoken to the clerk already to let him know my situation. But I worried the entire time. The defendant hadn't shown, but if I walked out, there was nothing I could do to discover her assets. So I stayed and waited.

Finally the judge came back. I thought she was going to go back to that lengthy case, but she did the right thing and took the quick cases first, followed by orals. I was out by 2:30, but it was all bad news. When my turn came and I stood in front of the judge, she pulled out a piece of paper stating that the defendant had filed for bankruptcy the day before. I know my jaw dropped open. I didn't say one word. I knew the defendant wasn't eligible for bankruptcy, but somehow she'd gotten away with filing a petition for Ch. 13.

My heart sank. It was already a rotten day. I'd missed a day's pay. The hour-long drive up had been in pouring, blinding rain. My hair was toast. Now I had to bttle traffic back to VA, and I was going back empty handed. All that for nothing. My ex-tenant had managed to screw me again.

Hence began my investigation into the defendant's bankruptcy, into bankruptcy code in general, and into the MD bankruptcy court system. These things take time. Plus the paperwork I had to fill out to file a claim. Seems the loser forgot to put me down as a creditor on her petition. She knows I'm the creditor but listed the court as the creditor of the judgment instead, probably on the advice of her sleazy lawyer who never should have filed the bankruptcy to begin with (which, by the way, costs $3,000 to do). Not surprising. Maybe she thought I wouldn't find out about it and would miss the creditor's meeting on May 29 (that'll be another holiday week ruined with yet another trip to court to continue to battle this loser—not to mention, another day's pay lost).

I went through her bankruptcy report, which is downloadable online (for a fee, of course), and found several inconsistencies (read: lies) about her assets monthly living expenses. ($285 for a phone bill??) She even lied about the amount of rent she's paying, putting down $2566 instead of $2200. She lied about the tax levy, which shouldn't have shown up on the report at all because it was paid off. In addition, she exagerrated the amount of the levy. She lied about her monthly wage amount on her 11/20/08 interrogatories, as I found out from the bankruptcy petition.

So I spent hours yesterday before going to my volunteer job, writing up all these (and more) 'inconsistencies' to send to the trustee, along with my claim form. According to a bankruptcy attorney I spoke with last week, this particular trustee in Baltimore is pretty smart and doesn't let anyone pull the wool over his eyes. I hope that's true.

Unfortunately, that doesn't help me now. I received a letter from the Court stating that she is ineligible for bankruptcy—but that doesn't stop the proceedings. Unbelievable. This is what I do not comprehend. A person can continue to file bankruptcies to stop paying their debts, whether they are eligible or not. I can't garnish wages because filing a bankruptcy petition (fraudulent or not) invokes an automatic stay for the debtor's creditors. No one can collect squat until the case is either discharged or dismissed, and that will take months. And by then she'll have a different job and I'll have to spend more hours tracking her down all over again. And by then there'll be a new tax lien against her . . . well, you get the picture.

You can't get blood from this turnip. If my defendant continues to pursue this Ch. 13, she might be facing jail time and a $500,000 fine. Not because she's ineligible—because she lied under oath on her bankruptcy petition.

This isn't a fair world at all. Oh, and God I miss New York. Just had to throw that in . . . .