In a tragic case of personal debt escalating out of control, it was reported in the press last week how an American woman had been driven to suicide due to threatening and menacing phone calls from her angry creditors.

The woman had been getting phone calls from her creditors throughout the day and night, demanding payment from her for her debts and lying to her about the consequences of her actions. She was told she could face jail time, that local enforcement officers were going to come round to her home to physically threaten her and that her husband was going to be arrested too. The creditors were unrelentingly hounding the woman, who they did not know was suffering from Bipolar, a mental illness that makes the sufferer prone to manic depression.

The lies that the creditors told the woman about her personal debt made her feel like there was no way out of the devastating situation she was in and she took her own life to put an end to the debt nightmare she had been living. It's hard not too think that if the woman had been completely mentally stable she may not have taken her life and instead looked into other possible debt solutions that could have helped her solve her debt crisis. However in law you 'take your victim as you find them', so the fact she was bipolar is irrelevant and her creditors could end up facing manslaughter charges.

The lesson that must be learnt from this tragic affair is that it is illegal, as governed by the Consumer Credit Act 1974, for creditors to hound you at home whenever they like and they certainly cannot make threatening phone calls to you.

If you are receiving menacing phone calls from creditors about your personal debt, make sure you write down everything they say to you and log what time of the day they are calling you, as you can take action against them.