Requirement to sign debt acknowledgement with date and amount in blank, to be filled later Question Are there other countries than Chile where private institutions and government alike require people to sign a debt acknowledgement with date and amount in blank (sometimes validated at the notary), to be filled some time after the signing? Related: I posted a distinct but similar question on https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/193376/research-funding-conditionned-to-the-signing-of-a-debt-acknowledgment-with-amoun about such debt acknowledgments used as a prerequisite for researchers to receive state research funding. Context In Chile, private hospitals routinely require their clients to sign a debt acknowledgment with an amount in blank before being admitted to the emergencies. It is considered as a (desirable) way to speed-up the admission process, permitting to people in pain to skip a long administrative process in order to insure that the cost of their medical treatment will be covered. The institution distributing state research funding ANID (formerly known as CONICYT) via various &quot;Fondecyt&quot; competitions (&quot;Fondecyt Initiation&quot; for young researchers, &quot;Fondecyt Regular&quot; for other researchers, etc.) is doing the same, requesting researchers who &quot;won&quot; the competition to sign at a notary's office a debt acknowledgment with both the amount and the date in blank, as a condition to get access to the research funding. Only a few notaries accept to validate such documents, but only because they normally compute their fees for validating such a document based on a percentage of the amount of the debt acknowledgment (which they cannot do when the amount is left blank). Motivation I thought that this would be illegal: signing a document is supposed to mean that one has read the terms of the documents and agrees with them, which is of course does not mean that one will agree with the terms of the documents once it has been modified. I was told that such document was indeed legal in Chile. As an academic in Chile, I am expected to apply for state research funding, and to sign such debt acknowledgment if awarded such funding (and told &quot;not to worry, as such debt acknowledgment is never enforced by the government&quot;). I find this the most note worthy example of systemic corruption, in the sense that the very meaning of a signed contract is corrupted. I would like to gather arguments in order to try to convince higher instances of the inadequacy of such a policy.
This Reconocimiento de deuda is a real and standard thing, and they also use them in Zimbabwe, but it says that the amount should be stated exactly (&quot;Se debe indicar con exactitud la cuantía de la deuda que se reconoce&quot;). Unless you fill in an amount that you are willing to accept as your debt, you are trusting that the various people who come to be in possession of the document are trustworthy. The document basically deprives you of the right to oppose the debt.
The &quot;SS&quot; is a standard part of a the notarization language on a document which is known as the &quot;jurat&quot; of a document. The “SS” stands for the Latin term “scilicet” which means &quot;in particular&quot; or &quot;namely&quot; and simply indicates that the place where the document was signed is described in the preceding bracketed portion of the jurat. You do not have mark anything or fill in any additional information on the “SS” designation itself. Completing the areas marked &quot;State of ________&quot; and &quot;County of _________&quot; with the location where the notarization takes place is where you enter the necessary information for the venue portion of this form. You are no doubt confused because one of the possible jurats for the form (the one for an individual petitioner) has a fill in the blank line which I have screen shotted below: The inclusion of a line to fill in following &quot;ss.&quot; on the form is a drafting error in the form, which is not repeated in the other jurats on the form, probably because the person who drafted the form didn't know what it meant. Another Flaw In The Form The same portion of the form also has another drafting error although a less innocent one and it appears in all of the jurats on that form. It should have omitted the words &quot;New York&quot; because it is not mandatory to actually notarize the Petition at a location that is physically within the State of New York, even though usually this is what will be done. On the other hand there was a requirement to sign the document in New York State, in contrast (which there isn't) then the fill in the blank line following &quot;New York&quot; should have been omitted. This is a case of someone gratuitously including an apparent extra-statutory requirement in a form (probably because they often have to reject forms if the state isn't filled in at all), without an explanation that &quot;New York&quot; may be crossed out and replaced with another state in the space following the name of the state.
What awards can I expect? In what ways would a judge's decisions about awards be legally limited? $500? Interest? Time spent pursuing collections? Filing fee? Anything else? My research so far suggests $500 plus reasonable (less than credit card) interest. Your lawsuit would be for breach of contract, probably filed in California small claims court for this small dollar amount. An award for breach of contract includes: the amount not paid pursuant to the contract, pre-judgment interest from the date that payment was due at the statutory rate in California (the legal rate specified in the contract applies until the contract is superseded by the verdict, but if the prejudgment interest rate is not specified in the contract, the rate is ten percent per annum from the date of the breach, California Civil Code § 3289), post-judgment interest at the statutory rate in California (10% per annum in a contract if not otherwise specified), and out of pocket costs incurred in filing the lawsuit (typically, the filing fee, the service of process fee, postage, copying costs incurred for trial exhibits, and any court fees incurred to collect the judgment if it is entered). Attorney fees are not available unless the contract says so. You are not entitled to any recovery for time spent pursuing collections. Often you have have a collections agency collect it for a percentage of the amount recovered (probably 50% in a claim of this size) plus a small fee, although they might not accept such a small dollar amount debt to collect. The main virtue of this is that it hurts the credit of the person who owes the money, a harm to the non-paying customer that is often far worse than not paying the amount owed on time. Are there any other legal disincentives for this behavior? A well drafted contract can provide for an award of attorney fees incurred in collecting the debt, can set a non-usurious interest rate and late fees for non-payment, and can take steps like requiring a deposit up front, or consenting to service of process by mail, to make collection more likely and to create stronger incentives to pay. Also, if the non-payment rate is low enough and the value of your time doing what you normally get paid to do is high, it may not make economic sense to pursue bad debt which takes some time and some money to get a small potential recovery, as opposed to letting it slide and doing more work that does pay. A small claims lawsuit is probably ten to thirty hours of work for which you will not be compensated even if you win. Depending upon your average hourly rate for your labor, and the percentage of your billings that go uncollected, it may not make economic sense to collect the unpaid bill, or you may want to delegate the job to someone else whose effective hourly rate of labor value is lower. Courts are cost effective places to collect large debts, and can be cost effective if many people owe you money and you can mass produce your collections process (as, for example, credit card companies do). But courts are often not cost effective for collecting one off small dollar amount debts, despite the streamlined process and reduced filing fees that are available in small claims court. if only a fraction of contractors seek justice, and the award never exceeds the originally agreed upon amount, then the rational decision would seem to be, don't pay the contractor. Consumers are not purely rational actors on a transaction by transaction basis in these matters. The vast majority of the time, people pay as agreed even though they could get away with paying less by forcing the person who did business with them to sue them to get paid. On a case by case basis, this is often not rational, but as a long term strategy for all transactions that a consumer enters into, it often does make rational sense. In small dollar transactions, blacklisting people from future business and harming their credit records is usually enough of an incentive to make uncollectible invoices an acceptable cost of doing business. But a good business person does evaluate every customer to whom trade credit is extended for creditworthiness if the customer does not pay in advance. On the other hand, as a business person, you may have a strategic interest in pursuing every unpaid invoice even if it isn't cost effective to do so when considering that unpaid invoice in isolation, in order to instill in your customers the knowledge that when you say you will sue them if you aren't paid, that you are making a credible threat. This may discourage people from not paying you in the first place.
The written document is given very high priority, so parties will be held to what is in the document. Both parties sign at the bottom, as a way of signalling their agreement with the terms specified in the document. If conditions are added or subtracted (by crossing out), especially with pre-printed forms, the "customer" (person who didn't write the contract) can initial such modifications, as a way of clearly signalling that they indeed agree to the deletion of such-and-such clause. Since both parties have a copy of the signed agreement, this is not strictly necessary. The potential issue would be that an unscrupulous person could cross out a clause after the contract was signed, and claimed that they aren't bound by that clause. A comparison of the two copies would then reveal that the unscrupulous person was attempting fraud. There is nothing special about handwriting in or crossing out conditions, except that it poses a potential evidentiary problem as to what exactly was agreed to, if for example one party threw away their copy and then maintained that the crossed-out clause had not been crossed out. (So, keep your copy). In case you are proposing a scenario where one party is unaware of a change, i.e. at the very last minute Smith crosses something out and signs it, and Jones did not see that happen, then both copies would be the same and Jones would be legally bound to what's in the paper. Smith should announce to Jones that a clause was being deleted. We might suppose that there are innocent reasons why Smith made changes without making an announcement to Jones, in which case the parties do not have an agreement. There may be amicable ways to deal with that situation, but push could come to shove, in which case the written form of the document is generally taken to be the most important piece of evidence (though not always the only admissible evidence, unless you're in Colorado, Florida or Wisconsin).
You are entitled to at least see, and probably get a copy of, any document you sign. If you insist, they will have to show you or give you a copy. It may well be that they are supposed to give you a copy even if you do not ask. But if you are going to insist, allow a bit of extra time at such appointments. If they describe the document, even in rather general terms, your signature is probably binding, unless they have significantly misrepresented the document. If they tell you it is consent to be treated and it is actually an agreement to purchase a timeshare, that would be fraud and the document would not be valid, but that would be very unlikely. There might be some provision that you do not like, but such agreements are usually fairly standard, and also usually not very negotiable if you want service at that office. Still, it is better practice to at least look over and get a copy of any document you agree to.
If the translation is correct, an assignment or pledge is an irrevocable pre-dispute grant of a property interest in future wages, and such an arrangement will not honored by the employer in the absence of a specific exception to the general rule of law prohibiting such arrangements (these arrangements are functionally equivalent to indentured servitude which is just a short step removed from slavery). An assignment is an irrevocable transfer of the right to future income that will be paid to the assignee that is a property right in that income. A pledge grants an irrevocable property right to future income to the beneficiary of the pledge in the event that a debt is not paid as agreed without the need to resort to filing a lawsuit (it is functionally equivalent to a confession of judgment paired with a garnishment). Assignments and pledges of income from property or a business is allowed, but you can't generally do that with wage or salary income as a matter of public policy. For example, you cannot make an irrevocable transfer of 25% of your future income for five years or until the car is paid off to pay for a new car. You can sign a promissory note to pay a certain amount of money that happens to be equal to 25% of your income, and can receive the money from your employer and pay it to the creditor. But, that is a contract right and not a property right, which means that you can unilaterally breach it subject to being sued for non-payment, that the contract debt will not survive a bankruptcy, and that a lawsuit has to be commenced and won to collect that debt involuntarily. If the car loan is not paid as agreed, and you don't go bankrupt, the creditor can sue you, win and garnish your wages after winning, but only then. But, there are exceptions to the general rule prohibiting the assignment or pledge or future wage and salary income, however, on various legal theories (e.g. that future wages and salary are community property of spouses). For example, sometimes this kind of wage assignment is permitted in the context of a divorce settlement. And, if it is permitted by law, the company will charge you to set it up, just as it would if your wages were garnished to collect on a post-dispute judgment.
If two parties have a contract, where one party is required to do X in exchange for the other party doing Y, then the terms specified in that contract would determine what happens. You would have to see exactly what it says, especially if the other party has the option to not give you money. A contract might say "A shall at his option give B $5,000 by date X; if A elects not to make payment, notice must be given 60 days before X". Failing to give timely notice is thus breech of contract. However if the clause only says "A shall at his option give B $5,000 by date X", then there is no requirement for advance notice. And this assumes that there is a contract whereby both parties have some obligation to the other. A gift, on the other hand, carries no obligations on the giving party. There may be some social code to the effect that they should have told you by now, but failing to give advance notice is at most rude and certainly not legally actionable.
The Bank of England actually makes this pretty clear with the following line: Legal tender has a very narrow and technical meaning, which relates to settling debts. It means that if you are in debt to someone then you can’t be sued for non-payment if you offer full payment of your debts in legal tender. Essentially, if you are in debt (frequent examples are a taxi ride or a meal at a sit-down restaurant) then you can use legal tender to pay off that debt. But that doesn't necessarily mean they have to accept it. It only means that they cannot sue you if they do refuse to accept it. But the refusal wouldn't itself alleviate the debt either. They could technically return to you at some point and say "ok, fine, we'll take the cash" and you'd still be obligated to provide it to pay off your debt. It's also worth emphasizing that this only applies to situations where the payment is to alleviate a debt, for services that have already been provided before you are billed. It would not apply while buying groceries at the supermarket. Even restaurants where you pay for your food up-front and then receive it afterwards can refuse cash payment. In those situations the services are prepaid and you are not ever alleviating a debt.