Bailiffs

On my way to work at the checkpoint (we usually whizz right through), we were told to go off to the side - in fact they were pulling people off the road at random. These people weren't army personnel, which I thought they were at first, but in fact they were the dreaded "hotza'a lapoel" - bailiffs, a debtor's nightmare. They were pulling over several cars a minute and checking to see if anyone had a debt to income tax. This way they would repossess the cars and we'd have to walk to work, or hitchhike or go back home or whatever. Fortunately, we were clear (there ARE miracles here) and we went on our way. Didn't see anyone's car being repossessed, and I'm glad. It would have been too depressing. It brought back the dreaded memory of bailiffs coming to our house in 1999 for non-payment of well - lots of debt, and taking all our furniture - even our washing machine (and we're a family of seven people) - did they really expect me to go find an old washboard at some flea market and do it all by hand??? This was while Hubby and I were both at work, while the children were coming home from school. They saw all this and were traumatized. We hired a loser lawyer at first, to get our washing machine back and our car that they repossessed. Then we hire a really excellent lawyer who talked to the judge about getting back our washing machine - and eventually our car. Things got so out of hand because we were spenders, new immigrants that came to the country with $2,000 in total, and the evil bank manager let us go haywire (without any collateral) in the bank. I thought it was something of an inside job in the bailiff's court, because as soon as we signed papers having all the debts consolidated in that court, they came to take our stuff. Once you have debts consolidated, you're protected from your stuff being taken, so long as you make monthly payments to the court. But it was the time in between filing and having the judge approve it that was the twilight zone. After having spoken to several people who had been in the same situation they also had the same thing happen to them after filing the claim and BEFORE the judge had signed the approval. Fishy, eh?