FTC

This is the text of a 2007 FTC advisory opinion dealing with whether the FDCPA prohibits a debt collector from notifying a consumer who disputed a debt that the collector has ceased its collection efforts and concluding that it does not.

This document reprints the FTC’s 1988 Staff Commentary on the FDCPA, providing interpretations to most FDCPA provisions.

This Commentary is the vehicle by which the staff of the Federal Trade Commission

publishes its interpretations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). It is a guideline

intended to clarify the staff interpretations of the statute, but does not have the force or effect of

statutory provisions. It is not a formal trade regulation rule or advisory opinion of the Commission,

and thus is not binding on the Commission or the public.

Because the Commission’s Guides Against Debt Collection Deception have been superseded by, and submitted in, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), the Commission has determined that it is in the public interest to eliminate them. The Guides were adopted in 1967 to codify the results of many debt collection cases brought by the Commission against debt collectors and creditors under Section 5(a)(1) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA).

The FTC has learned that, to recover on a decedent’s debts, some debt collectors contact the decedent’s relatives, although these relatives may have no authority to pay the debts from the decedent’s estate and no legal obligation to pay the debts from their own assets. By contacting persons who are not specified in Section 805 of the FDCPA, and by engaging in practices that may deceive those persons about their obligations, these debt collectors may be violating the FDCPA.The FTC will forebear from enforcing Section 805(b) of the FDCPA, 15 U.S.C.

Pursuant to the FTC’s authority to enforce the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (‘‘FDCPA’’), 15 U.S.C. 1692l(a), and Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (‘‘FTC Act’’), 15 U.S.C. 45, the Commission issues this final Statement of Policy Regarding Communications in Connection with the Collection of Decedents’ Debts (‘‘Statement’’).1 When a person dies, creditors and the debt collectors they hire usually have the right to collect on the person’s debts from the assets of his or her estate.