• Defaulting on a credit card account can harm your credit.credit card and hand image by Warren Millar from Fotolia.com
  
  Defaulting on a credit card balance is serious business no matter where you live. By defaulting on your account, you will harm your credit, have to deal with debt collectors and may even have to face a lawsuit. If you live in Pennsylvania and cannot pay your bills, you should be aware that Pennsylvania law protects you against both abusive collection tactics and wage garnishment if you are sued.
  
  

Credit Reporting

• There are no special protections for Pennsylvania residents when it comes to credit reporting. If you are late or default on your credit card payments, your credit report will take a significant hit. At the same time, you are protected under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, which requires credit bureaus to investigate untrue information on your report and remove what it, or a creditor, cannot verify. The federal law also limits the length of time that most negative information can remain on your report to seven years, or ten years for bankruptcy.
  
  

Collection Efforts

• While collection agencies have the right to try and persuade you to pay your debt, they do not have the right to use illegal or abusive tactics. Both the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Pennsylvania's Fair Credit Extension Uniformity Act forbid bill collectors from calling you in the middle of the night, at work (if they have been told that your employer does not permit them to call you there), or if the bill collector is informed that you are represented by a lawyer. In addition, it is against the law for the collector to make threats that it cannot, or will not, follow up on. For example, there are no debtor's prisons in America, and people don't go to jail for not paying a credit card bill. If a bill collector threatens you with jail time, he has violated both state and federal law.
  
  

Lawsuits

• While a credit card company or collection agency can file a lawsuit against you in Pennsylvania, it must do so within the time period allowed by the statute of limitations. In Pennsylvania, the current statue of limitations in 2010 on filing a lawsuit to collect a debt is four years. If a creditor does file a lawsuit against you after that period of time, you can ask the judge to have the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that it is out of statute.
  
  Pennsylvania state law does not permit creditors to garnish your wages. If your creditor does win a lawsuit against you, it will need to find other ways to collect what you owe.