Under new rules approved by the Maryland Court of Appeals last week, an affidavit and a no-show defendant will no longer be enough to win a collections judgment in the state. The rules are aimed at reining in debt buyers, who buy records of delinquent debts along with the right to collect those debts. The purchased records can be shoddy, sometimes consisting of nothing more than a name and an a dollar amount allegedly owed. Without evidence documenting the debt, some debt buyers depend on default judgments to prevail. Unsurprisingly, alleged debtors are not always served with the complaint.
Under the new rules, debt collectors will have to show proof of the debt, their ownership of it, and the debt's legality. The amendments were pushed by the Legal Aid Bureau and Public Justice Center in Baltimore, among others. They follow a report by the FTC last year, which recommended measures for state courts to discourage abusive practices by debt buyers.
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