Bailiffs - Who Are They and How Can They Affect Your Life?

Bailiffs refer to people with legal authority to collect debts on behalf of creditors. They are normally categorized into three, certificated, county court and the private. They are different and have more powers than debt collectors since they are court officials and, can take your assets. However, they have different powers depending on each category.

A notice is normally sent 14 days before the due day of their visit to collect your possession. You should take an immediate action since there is some fee charged for the bailiffs thereby increasing your bills. During this time, you can go to court and apply for the suspension of the warrant and request to make payment on affordable amounts. This authorized people have no right to break into your premises and if they do, take an immediate action.

However, they can enter your house through unlocked door or window. Once they are inside, they can search anywhere within the rooms and collect all valuable goods. They are however not supposed to collect basic household assets such as clothes, bedding, utensils and items used for work for instance, the computers. They have the right to take things like your car, TV and the DVD players. Since they normally sell goods at a low price, they could take almost all your assets and still not clear the bills. Your case will deteriorate as you will be left more poorer, frustrated and still with some bills to pay off.

Once the bailiffs have entered your house, you can sign a walking possession agreement. This means that, if you fail to make payment at the agreed time or miss an amounts, they will come and take all the goods they had listed. You do not have to let those people into your house and, the only way you can do this is by making sure all the doors and windows are tightly closed. The rules regarding this people are very complicated and you should therefore pay your bills in time to avoid such incidents from happening.

Study the City Ordinances, County Codes and Federal Laws When Franchising

Many franchise opportunity buyers see a great new concept and want to get in on the ground floor, what they may not understand is that their city has an ordinance against such types of businesses, their county has rules concerning such companies, and their state has additional regulations that are untypical to other states. Suffice it to say it's important to check the local, state, and federal laws concerning such a business prior to the purchase of the franchise.

In many franchise agreements it states that the franchisee must comply with all local, regional, state and national laws, and thus, any additional costs associated with compliance once the business is opened is indeed the sole responsibility of that franchisee. Now then, having been in the franchising industry for 2-decades before early retirement, I have seen a number of for instances, and solid reasons for recommending that franchise buyers; Check the Local Ordinances before purchasing a franchise business opportunity, but let me give you just one to illustrate this.

One of our franchise companies was a Mobile Oil Change Service Business. We noted that a number of cities in and around Los Angeles County had ordinances against mobile auto services in business improved parking lots (of various zoning), home driveways on any public street. Thus, we didn't bother trying to sell any franchises there, but our franchising competition did. Once the franchisees bought their franchises with assigned territories they couldn't even work in things got nasty.

The disgruntled franchisees were seeking litigation, but against the big guns of their franchisor choose not to. Their loss turned out to be our gain, as we hired one of them, and allowed the other to join our franchise team after their termination and the non-compete clauses ran out. Still, this is a good lesson for any franchise opportunity buyer, so please remember; Check the Local Ordinances before you buy your franchise.