Every answer — page 6

A debt collector has to tell you what it thinks you owe and to whom, and has to stop collecting if you dispute in writing until it sends verification. Those duties are narrower than most people expect.

A credit reporting dispute is a statutory process with a deadline attached. This is what you send, what the bureau and the data furnisher must do with it, and where to go when the result is wrong.

A creditor with a judgment can garnish wages and levy accounts, but federal and state law put much of a low-income household's money and property out of reach. Being judgment-proof describes that situation.

Federal law gives you access to the file each nationwide credit bureau keeps on you. Reading it in order, section by section, is how you find the entries that are actually wrong.

A lender with a security interest can usually take the collateral back without going to court, but only without a breach of the peace, and only with notice before it sells and accounts for the proceeds.

When the limitation period on a debt runs out, the creditor loses the ability to win a lawsuit but not the debt itself. A payment or an acknowledgment can restart that period in many states.

Housing law splits into three questions: what you may build or alter yourself, what the landlord must do or waive for you, and what the building was required to include before anyone moved in.

Federal law guarantees a private, independent ballot and the right to choose who helps you cast it. Those two guarantees decide most disputes that arise at a polling place.

Air travel runs on its own disability statute with its own complaint machinery. Knowing to ask for the complaints resolution official on the spot is what usually decides the outcome.

Most equipment denials turn on paperwork rather than principle. Knowing which funder is deciding, and what that funder's own criteria say, is what turns a refusal into an approval.

Effective communication is a separate duty from physical access. It decides when an interpreter, real-time captioning or a braille or large-print version has to be provided, and at whose expense.

Emergency plans are covered by disability law like any other government program or workplace practice. That gives you leverage before a disaster and a complaint route afterward.

There is no single disability complaint office. The setting decides the agency, the deadline and the remedy, and choosing wrong can cost the deadline entirely.

Paratransit is a legal entitlement tied to a fixed-route bus or rail system, not a courtesy. Eligibility, service limits and appeals all run on federal rules that a local agency cannot narrow.