On the rental contracts page, there does seem to be some wiggle room in your 30% payment. If the rent is above the legislated payment standards, you pay the rest up to 40% of your income. If the rent is higher than that, you won't qualify.

I would like to know if a collect agency has a right to garnish your wages and if so, what are the steps they must take and do I as a consumer have any rights to have it stopped?

Thank you very much for your help,

sml8402

We have lived at our current address for 19 years. We owed a piece of rental property in the city until June 1996. Laclede Gas has now says we are in arrears for $51 for period ending May 1996. The first floor was vacant for all of 1996. We have paid receipts for the second floor up until the time we sold the house. We, also, have a paid inspection for June 1996. Laclede Gas now says that they didn't know where we lived even though we were receiving bills at our current residence. First, is is legal for them to say we owe this after almost 11 years?
Second, if they had billed up appropriatedly at the time, this would have been tax deductable as a business expense. Now we would no longer be able to claim this.
I have requested a detailed summary from them of times and amounts, but I don't really have any idea how we can fight this.

What can we do? Any suggestions?