repo/legal?

What state?

 

I don't think it matters where you are...if you didnt make payments on the car, and it wasnt paid off it is theirs to take. Notice I said think..

 

Yes, it is legal. Make sure you carfully read all documents you signed. Most likely there is a paragraph in one which grants the lienholder the right to enter your property to retrieve their goods.

 

Lots of states have their own laws about repossessions. Can get very technical.

 

Passion, go to http://www.lawdog.com
select your state
select automobiles and repossession
in the upper right hand corner select repossessions
see what it says there....

any questions?

 

correct me if i am mistaken, but since when are repo men allowed to break into your garage? in PA this is a NO NO. my understanding is that the garage is like a house, and if you PERMIT them to enter, then fine, otherwise they need to wait till you take it to work or park it on the street.

 

Even if it isn't illegal to break and enter to repo an automobile, it's illegal to damage property while doing so. I used to do auto repos for a lot of cheezy car lots in Denver. That was before Colorado passed laws making self-help repos illegal and all repos had to be adjucated by a court of law before they could be performed. That was a long time ago. If I remember right, about 1970, maybe 1971. Before the change in the law, you could go onto a person's property and snake the car off, but if it was behind a closed gate, you had better keep your mitts off of it. Didn't have to be a garage, just a closed gate. You'd better not be opening any garage doors to snake a car out. If the garage door was open and the car was inside you could pull it out, but you better not damage any property in the process. Even so, you'd better not get caught in the act of taking it out of the garage. After the fact, too bad. So if it was in a garage, I just left it alone. You just about had to hand push it off a person's property or drive it off one. Best keep your tow truck off people's property.

Every state is different. What's ok in one state can get the repo man a trip to the pokey in another. Somebody suggested lawdog. Good suggestion.

 

Wasn't that a 70s-era television action show? I think I remember watching that every Saturday night right after Bob Newhart:

"BILL BAUER REPO MAN" ©1971 CBS

Doc

 

No, don't think so, Doc. (LOL) Lot's of funny stuff happened back then though. Probably one of the most hilarous was this old boy that had bought a car from a tote-the-note lot and didn't pay for it. He hid it out real good until one morning I caught him driving it down on South Santa Fe in about the 3700 block. He had stopped at George's supermarket on the south side of the street. It's not there anymore as far as I know but it used to be a pretty popular little store. It was right in front of the old city dump on South Santa Fe. There was a bunch of little skid row type cottages behind the store and George, a chinese fellow, used to own them too. They finally got so dilapidated that the city condemned them and bought it from him and then filled in the huge hole behind the store they sat in with garbage from the land fill. All that area is filled in level now.

But anyway, this guy pulled out onto Santa Fe and headed towards downtown Denver. I pulled up beside him and pointed down towards his driver's side rear tire. So he pulled off onto the shoulder of the road and I told the wife who was with me what I was gonna do and she should get into the drivers seat ready to pull out when I snatched his car. We got out of our vehicles and he asked me what was the matter with his tire. I told him it was wobbling real bad, looked like it might be about to fall off. He said he couldn't see anything wrong so I told him that if he would get down on his hands and knees and let me drive his car ahead a little he would find out what was wrong real quick. So he did, and I got in and drove his car forward a little bit. Right on down to the car dealers lot. He found out what his problem was real quick. Just like I promised him he would. The car dealer's name was Dick, and he told me that old boy wasn't the least bit happy with me when he came in to pay for and pick up his car. Seems he objected strenously to getting his morning exercise.

Another old boy had a special edition 55 chev wagon he wasn't paying for. He worked at a factory that had a high fence all around it and a parking lot inside the fence. Beside the factory was a vacant lot the employees could park in too. We knew where he worked but we could never get to his car because it was always inside the fence. But one evening after work he pulled into that parking lot, got out of his car and went back to the rear end and opened up the tail gate to get something out. We just happened by at the right moment and we stopped and started admiring his car. Asked him if I could look inside. He had the engine running to warm up the car and he said sure. I gotta get something out of the back anyway. He walked towards the back and first thing he knew it was a long walk back to the car lot to get his car. He wasn't too happy either.

I had an awful lot of fun back then and some of the experiences might have been funny enough to have made good material for a tv show, but if there was such a show as you speak of nobody ever contacted me about it and I never saw one like it either.

 

LOL, well I made up the part about the TV show. But after reading your wonderfully funny stories there, I think CBS missed out on an opportunity. I can't imagine having the intestinal fortitude (ok, the balls) to jump into someone's car right in front of them and drive it off. Thanks for the serious laugh this morning, Bill.

Doc

 

I've had lots of folks tell me I am better equipped than a brass monkey.
LOL

 

I remember one time up in Colorado where I was in a meeting with a bigwig along with about 50 of my employees when we were working on a pipeline right of way. The bigwig was feeding us a bunch of manure about all the union laws he thought my employees should be trying to get put in place on the job and they weren't buying it.

I told the dude that my religion prohibited me from telling him what I really thought of him but I that I sincerely hoped that when he went home that night his mother would run out from under the front porch and bite him.

That ended the meeting and we went back to work.

 

ROFL!

 

It is not legal in California to enter a private building or secured area without consent of the owner to repossess an automobile.

http://www.weblocator.com/attorney/ca/law/c05.html#cac050500

 

I'm not a mortgage broker, but I have read posts on this net that claims that lots of people have been forced to pay the debts before they could close on the mortgage. I'd do something about the debts long before shopping for a house if I could.

 

I doubt that is necessarily true.
Now then, maybe if I got an email from you I might be able to think up a few ways for you to shorten that time considerably. Maybe down to a year or less.