Okay if your attorney told them for any financial matters then they defiantly should not have contacted you direct. Based on your answer that is a slam dunk FDCPA violation. I would make sure your attorney is prepared to state that in court also.
Might be a good idea to get an affidavit from the attorney right now. It can be used as a great tool for leverage, especially since the other side would know the attorney can show up in court to authenticate the affidavit.
On the issue of why are they still going after you since your filing BK? While you seem like an honest person that just had some bad luck and fully intend to file BK, would you care to imagine how many people tell them that in an effort to avoid lawsuits.
In addition, there are attorney's everywhere and everybody has at least a few in the family or are close friends with one. It would not be unheard of for an attorney to even call up creditors and tell them a client is going to file BK.
A common ploy by some credit repair companies is to use attorney's to make it look like the client has one foot already inside the courthouse with a pen in their hand ready to sign the BK papers. Once again, I'm sure your situation is not this and you are indeed going to file, but it happens all the time that people are just bluffing.
People telling cops they will have their badge, if you don't fix this matter right now you will hear from my lawyer, I'm going to sue you for harassment, I'll see you in court because I'm not paying this speeding ticket, and go ahead and sue me I'm filing BK anyway, all fall pretty much into the same category, in one ear and out the other.
In my previous job in insurance claims, I can assure you somebody threatening an attorney had zero effect on me or how I handled the claim or the decisions I made. Did some get attorney's, sure.
At that point I simply don't care. It is just a claim. I'm sure that is how the other side is looking at it, they don't care, their suing and if you want to BK the lawsuit, so be it, they will move to the next person. It's just a big numbers game and they want to win more than they lose.
If they do that they don't care who files BK or not. For every ten people that tell them BK is just around the corner, nine might be full of it. You might be that one out of the ten that does. However, they will make their money back on what they lost on you from the nine that were bluffing.
So they really don't care if you are serious or bluffing. The odds say your bluffing (I understand your not, just the odds say you are) so they are going to move forward since the odds are in their favor.
In sports gambling if you bet the exact same amount on every game and take into account the 10% "juice or vig" paid on losing bets, you need to win 53.76 percent of the time to break exactly even. So if you win 60 percent of the time you're making good money. If you are really good and win 70% of the time your considered an expert and people will pay you for your picks.
However, that means 30 or 40 percent of the time you look like a losing buffoon that made a stupid bet and wasted their hard earned money. In your case if they spend 5K getting a judgement against you, only to have you immediately BK the judgement away, they are going to look like foolish buffoons.
That is unless they just collected 50K from all the other consumers that did not BK their judgements away yet gave them the same or similar story you gave them.
Your thinking about it from a common sense, emotional, just focusing on a single account and lawsuit perspective. They are looking at it from a business perspective backed by research and data that supports their decision to sue you even though your threatening BK and have had an attorney contact them.
They are wanting to win the war and not necessarily the particular battled against you. I'm sure you have heard the phrase, "It's just the cost of doing business."
Now with all that said I do hope you do make this a very expensive cost of doing business for them. Sometimes Attorney Generals do have a way of making that cost of doing business a little more costly and painful.
