Ok I will preface my story by saying I live in Maryland. That might make a difference or not, I don't know. Here's the situation:
My wife taught at a certain public elementary school in a certain county during the 2003 school year. At the end of the year, she quit because we moved too far away for her to have a reasonable daily commute to school. But the school did not stop paying her! We called them after they had over payed her two times and told them to stop. The checks kept coming. We called again, at least once, maybe twice, I don't remember exactly since this was 3 years ago. Finally the checks stopped. The county school system did not know how to tell us to return the money at that time. We tried. They said their system couldn't handle that or something and they didn't know what to tell us. They thanked us for bringing the problem to their attention with the sentiment that most people probably wouldn't have done what we did. But they didn't know what to do about us giving the money back to them. So they thanked us, we went on our way. We filed our IRS tax return for the year 2003 and we reported and payed our taxes on that income.
Fast forward to this past Friday evening. There is a message on our answering machine when I get home from work. A woman from "the offices of ____ and ____" asking us to return her call. She doesn't say what it was about so I almost didn't call back. But I did. It was a collections agent (as I suspected due to the nondescript nature of the message she left us). I was thinking it might be medical related because we recently had a baby and my wife had spent some time in the hospital. Although we had no outstanding bills to our knowledge, I thought maybe something had slipped through the cracks in the myriad of bills we had received related to that. But no. The school system now has sent a collections agency after us to collect on what they say was some $5800 in overpayment. After 3 years!!
I'm pissed! I guarantee you had we not brought their mistake to the school systems attention, who knows how long they would have continued paying my wife? We tried to give the money back and they didn't know how to accept it!! WTF!? Now 3 years later they send a collections agent after us!? So does anybody know if there is a legal statute of limitations on this kind of thing? Do we still have any legal obligation to pay back that money after all this time, given the lengths we went to in order to try and do the right thing and correct the problem at the time? Can this ruin our otherwise very healthy credit record? This is just fvcked up. Right at the holiday time of year too. Merry Fvckin Christmas!
EDIT - THERE WERE NO CHECKS! All fund transactions were by direct deposit, so it's not as if they sent us checks and we cashed them knowing the money wasn't ours. Should I have stopped the transfers at my banks level? Yes, but I never dreamed they would keep making the payments after the first time I called to have them stop. But they did. My wife was looking back at our records and determined that she thinks they overpaid her 4 times total. They are also full of crap about it being $5800. Our records indicate nowhere near that much.
My wife taught at a certain public elementary school in a certain county during the 2003 school year. At the end of the year, she quit because we moved too far away for her to have a reasonable daily commute to school. But the school did not stop paying her! We called them after they had over payed her two times and told them to stop. The checks kept coming. We called again, at least once, maybe twice, I don't remember exactly since this was 3 years ago. Finally the checks stopped. The county school system did not know how to tell us to return the money at that time. We tried. They said their system couldn't handle that or something and they didn't know what to tell us. They thanked us for bringing the problem to their attention with the sentiment that most people probably wouldn't have done what we did. But they didn't know what to do about us giving the money back to them. So they thanked us, we went on our way. We filed our IRS tax return for the year 2003 and we reported and payed our taxes on that income.
Fast forward to this past Friday evening. There is a message on our answering machine when I get home from work. A woman from "the offices of ____ and ____" asking us to return her call. She doesn't say what it was about so I almost didn't call back. But I did. It was a collections agent (as I suspected due to the nondescript nature of the message she left us). I was thinking it might be medical related because we recently had a baby and my wife had spent some time in the hospital. Although we had no outstanding bills to our knowledge, I thought maybe something had slipped through the cracks in the myriad of bills we had received related to that. But no. The school system now has sent a collections agency after us to collect on what they say was some $5800 in overpayment. After 3 years!!
I'm pissed! I guarantee you had we not brought their mistake to the school systems attention, who knows how long they would have continued paying my wife? We tried to give the money back and they didn't know how to accept it!! WTF!? Now 3 years later they send a collections agent after us!? So does anybody know if there is a legal statute of limitations on this kind of thing? Do we still have any legal obligation to pay back that money after all this time, given the lengths we went to in order to try and do the right thing and correct the problem at the time? Can this ruin our otherwise very healthy credit record? This is just fvcked up. Right at the holiday time of year too. Merry Fvckin Christmas!
EDIT - THERE WERE NO CHECKS! All fund transactions were by direct deposit, so it's not as if they sent us checks and we cashed them knowing the money wasn't ours. Should I have stopped the transfers at my banks level? Yes, but I never dreamed they would keep making the payments after the first time I called to have them stop. But they did. My wife was looking back at our records and determined that she thinks they overpaid her 4 times total. They are also full of crap about it being $5800. Our records indicate nowhere near that much.
