201
Refusing tendered payment immediately discharges debt...
I sent you 80 lbs of coconuts, if you can't accept that then I don't owe anything.
I think I would have applied the silver at face value. "Thanks for your 50 Morgan dollars. We have lowered your balance by $50."
Ingots of silver can be rejected (not legal tender). But you are correct, US coinage is cash and is legal tender. For once, this is a scenario where that term actually applies. The poster owes a debt, and the legal tender must be accepted as payment.
However, since the poster offered the shipment as an offer for "payment in full", such an offer is "all or nothing". They cannot pick out the legal tender coinage and apply it to the debt while rejecting the rest of the shipment. It's not different to how if I owe you a debt of $500, then offer you $50 in cash and a silver ingot as payment in full, you are not entitled to keep the $50 as partial payment while sending the ingot back. You are only able to accept my offer and absolve the debt or reject it and send everything back.
Your second paragraph is correct but the first one is not. An individual is not required to accept legal tender. The government is, but individuals can accept or reject any form of payment.
Not quite. Any seller can reject any form of payment at the point of sale. But, after a contract has been established, private parties are required to accept U.S. currency as a form of payment.
Hence the words printed on paper money: "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE."
The case Marbury v. Madison (1803) established the power of Congress to declare legal tender. However, it also clarified that this power doesn't compel private entities to accept it for all transactions.
I'm not talking about a transaction like in a grocery store. I'm taking about contracts. Under contract law, a debt paid in US currency is considered fulfillment of the contract.
Individuals are required to accept legal tender. If they refuse payment by legal tender then they get nothing. The debt is absolved by the act of offering (tendering) payment through legal tender. This is why Federal Reserve Notes have "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private".
Edit: They are required to accept it for debts. They are not required to accept it as payment for goods and services when a debt has not been incurred. For example, a coffee shop isn't required to accept cash and can choose to only accept credit card payments.
We refused cash as a mortgage company.
That is legally impermissible. It's just that nobody bothered to take your employer to court over it. But if someone sends cash, your employer is legally obligated to accept it. If your employer sues someone for non-payment or tries to foreclose and the debtor offers payment in physical cash, it cannot be refused.
We got away with it ≠ it was legal
Section 31 U.S.C. 5103 states that US currency is legal tender for "all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues." This means businesses must accept cash for these specific purposes, but not necessarily for all transactions, including mortgage payments.
Are you arguing that a mortgage is not a debt??
No. I am saying in the US businesses have "freedom of contract" and can decide to accept cash or not. Check case law.
You cannot contract out this provision.
Suppose I'm a customer of your employer, and my contract says that the payments due are $1,000 per month by cheque or bank transfer only. I try sending $1,000 cash. Your employer rejects this payment and asks me to pay by cheque or bank transfer, per the terms of the contract. If I refuse, I'm in breach of contract and that gives your employer the right to foreclose on the lien against my house (subject to relevant local law and contract terms).
However, by breaching the contract, that also means I owe your employer a debt equal to the amount of the payment (or more, up to the entire amount, again depending on the exact terms and applicable law). If no money is owed, then your employer does not have the ability to foreclose. They can take me to court in a foreclosure action, but if I then plop down a stack of $100 notes of the correct size, then that absolves the debt. In reality, if this happened, it's probably more likely that the judge would direct me to pay the court clerk and have the clerk write a cheque or tell me to buy a cashier's cheque.
If they specifically want payment by bank transfer or cheque when they sue me, they're not suing for damages; they're suing for specific performance. That's not easy and it's usually quite hard to justify to the court why you want specific performance instead of just damages, especially since this would be a pretty facetious case to begin with. At the same time, I do think there is a good chance the judge will say "So the defendant offered the full amount that you want in cash and you turned them down? GTFO of here, case dismissed."
The act of offering legal tender as payment for a debt absolves the debt. If I offer your employer payment in cash, they cannot point to the contract as an excuse to refuse.
If you can cite case law to the contrary, I'm happy to admit you're right and revise my comments.
So no, businesses in the US do not have the "right to contract" out the legal tender nature of cash. It's just a small thing called "reality" that prevents the situation I describe from actually happening.
- People are usually not stupid enough to play games and test the limits of the law with their mortgages and houses.
- Being unreasonable is a great way to get judges to hate you and assess costs against you. Nobody is pretending that refusing to pay with a cheque or bank transfer and then bringing a briefcase of Benjamins into court when the mortgage company tries to foreclose is reasonable.
- There is literally no benefit (to sane law-abiding citizens) to insisting on paying cash when paying by cheque or bank transfer creates a verifiable record of payment and orders more convenient and is much safer than sending large quantities of cash by post.
So is this conversation almost entirely pointless? Yes.
Minus the handling and resale fees, along with sales tax, of course.
If he gave up $15,180 in silver (based on spot price of $23 per ounce, spot changes minute to minute based on many factors such as worldwide demand), it means that he actually owes the rental people $15,108,000. This is a rare unicorn, this solvent silver sovvy, and this is his version of taping $3.00 of junk silver to a letter to the gas company. If I were the creditor, I would test the silver bullion or rounds with an acid kit and then accept it as a partial payment, if genuine. This unicorn might be the only sovvy ever to actually offer anything fungible to pay off a debt. They could take him to court for the rest, but that slot machine of crazy only pays out once. Write it off as bad debt for tax purposes.
Why do you think he owes 10x? He could just owe 15k and actually he trying to pay it off. That is what I don't get.
can't bro just sell the silver and pay them? why the extra hassle?
Sovcits make everything hard.
Silver is magic (see werewolf and vampire lore) and so it's real value is approximately 1000 times greater than the face value or going market value for the same coin. It can't be evenly traded for money, only for buying goods and reimbursing debts. That's why you can buy a house for only 10 silver coins (as long as you have 2 witnesses and 2 recording secretaries). Honestly, this guy over paid.
Good question. That would take planning and the ability to follow through. Shrug.
I wonder what the reasoning is to send 15 thousand dollars worth of silver instead of just sending 15k directly.
Any transaction in legal tender recognized by the state is an admission of residence and/or citizenship of said state and thus a subject to its law must adhere to any and all demands, and I ain't no state's bitch.
So by sovcit logic I can go to any eu country and buy a bowl of spaghootles with euros and I'm now a european.
Seems like that would simplify immigration
Username checks out.
"Blessings" lol
That's quite a corporate sign off.
Toodles,
The People You Still Owe Money To
“Blessings”? Who closes a professional letter like that?
Maybe it's just a nicer way of saying "Bless your heart".
Fair 😂
Seems to be located in Texas.
Is this typical there?
They are pretty religious.
How much do they owe??
He did not say but given sovcits usually send one whole silver coin when they try this, must be a lot.
But wait…. I was to understand that any debt could be canceled by presenting a single silver coin of any size or weight… obviously the mistake was sending too many, thus invalidating the 1099a.
SMH I should sell tiny silver coins to these people.
You'd probably make lots of fake money from them
Did they watch John Wick, and think that's how it actually works?
I don't get it, 660 ounces of silver is 15k, why didn't they just sell their silver and pay off their debt?
Because then it wouldn't be batshit crazy.
I don't know how much they owed, but I just check the price of silver--$23.34 oz--so the 660 oz would be $1504.40.
I can't see anybody taking hard metal as a payment though.
You’re off by a decimal place.
$15,180, roughly, based only on spot. Some of those MIGHT be collector's items worth more, as I can see some of the rounds are in capsules/plastic sleeves. It depends on condition and sometimes it's worth it to have something that might be rare or unusual graded by a coin valuation company. Usually, it's not worth the fees.
Silver coins aren't worth much to collectors, specifically because they're so easy to get for collectors. The supply is huge, the demand tiny, and they basically never break because nobody is using them.
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
201 points (100.0% liked)
InsanePeopleFacebook
3662 readers
1 users here now
Screenshots of people being insane on Facebook. Please censor names/pics of end users in screenshots. Please follow the rules of lemmy.world
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS