Let's say you have a credit card debt that is 30 days away from going past your state's SOL. For the sake of argument, let's call this a big amount -- several thousand dollars. You make an offer to pay the CA a settlement. Your letter reads something like "I do not agree that this debt is valid, but I no longer have the time to deal with this. While denying liability, I will offer you (20%) as settlement in full on this matter." They never accept and you send nothing further. Again for the sake of argument, say you give them a reasonable period of time -- let's call it 30 days after receipt -- to accept the settlement, and they never reply. Did that restart the SOL? My thoughts: No. Even if receipt of the letter is acknowledged by both sides, they didn't accept your settlement or communicate in any way. EDIT - sorry for the formatting, but the editor is stripping out my line breaks.
I've been away from this awhile but I believe that in states which do re-start the clock (tolling?)this only happens if you make a payment. I don't think an offer would do anything.
Awesome info on that here - What You Need to Know About the Statue of Limitations and Time-Barred Debts
Hi sparq, Without knowing what state you are in I would say no, the only thing (in my experience over the last 7 years) that can reage a debt is a payment, especially if you told them in your letter that you don't believe it's right in the first place but that you will just pay them to go away. These S.O.B's get on my nerves. Now here was your mistake, you should not have offered them anything with the SOL being so close. You could have waited and then let lose the hounds of hell on them and not had to worry about going to court because the SOL would have passed. You would have been in control of the situation.
