The Meat Grinder - When the debt-collection machine comes for its pound of flesh

COVER STORY - The Meat Grinder - When the debt-collection machine comes for its pound of flesh

Nanette Paxton parks her 2002 Suburban outside the Spokane County Courthouse, and then, still gripping the steering wheel, cries. And for the first time in years, she prays. Not a prayer of faith — she’d already lost her faith in God and justice and everything else — but a prayer of utter desperation: If there’s even a chance you really exist, please help me now.
She wipes the running mascara off her face with some toilet paper and walks toward Judge Ellen Clark’s courtroom. She doesn’t have any legal experience. She hopes her personal story will be enough.
She could tell the judge about the divorce, how she was left caring for five children, surviving on food stamps and inconsistent child support, watching her debts pile up. She couldn’t return to work, she could say, not with a 16-year-old with autism and a 7-year-old with separation anxiety, and a back still hurting from a car accident.
She had turned to her Discover Card from time to time to buy school clothes and Christmas gifts. But then she got behind on her payments, and a Seattle law firm, using the courts, took the last $231 from her bank account.