Understanding the Mini-Miranda warnings

When a person is about to be arrested, law enforcers should never forget to state his or her Miranda rights, otherwise, most of what the suspects say in custody cannot be used as evidence.  In debt collection, a similar set of warnings, called the Mini-Miranda warnings, is required when contact is initiated with the debtor.

The Mini-Miranda warnings require a debt collection agency to explicitly state that:

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·         It is a debt collector.

·         The reason for communication is an attempt to collect or recover a debt.

·         Anything that the debtor will say, or any information provided, can be used for the purpose of debt collection.

Whatever form of communication the collector uses, the Mini-Miranda warnings or rights should be presented.  If a face-to-face meeting was set or a phone call was made, the warning must be voiced out.  And if the collection process was initiated through a letter or via other written methods, the Mini-Miranda warnings must be included in the message.

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One of the primary reasons the Mini-Miranda warnings were created was to help protect consumers and businesses from abusive debt collection practices.  Also, when the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCA) was enacted in 1977, the Mini-Miranda rights were also specified without officially being labeled as such (it’s important to keep in mind here that the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act is in play for consumer collections and not for commercial or B2B collections).  It was only after it was realized that the warnings were similar to the Miranda rights did lawyers, politicians, debt collectors, and financial analysts started to refer to these as the Mini-Miranda warnings.

Brennan & Clark LLC has decades of expertise in the business collections industry, allowing them to help companies achieve well-defined goals for their collection process, evaluate internal procedures, plan and implement improvements, and ensure better results on collections. Visit this website to read more about the firm.