I entered into a auto loan agreement with a sub-prime lender. After about 1 year and admittedly a slow to pay relationship I wanted to get the lender to compromise the balence and settle the account. The reason was their abusive and illegal collection tactics. They violated several standards in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Such as 3rd party disclosure harrassment and abuse of contact. They contacted my wife's employer and advised them of exactly why they were calling which damaged my wifes position at work. They too contacted several family members and friends and repeated this action. In addition they would call several time a day at hours they were told were not convienient to us and taunted us. They did this even when payments weren't late. I had contacted them and shared the information I had about their tactics with a corporate officier. After seeing the afidivits and hearing the recorded conversation with their employees they decided to settle the account for 70% of the balance. In order to stop us from sueing them. They agreed to this via e-mail. We had to borrow the monies from my wifes 401k for the settlement This of course took time. So they agreed that we would make the payments until the monies came available and set a "drop dead" date for the settlement We met their deadline for the continuing payments (2). We then received the monies before their end date. Before we could wire transfer the mony they repoed the car without futher notice. And attempted to squeeze additional monies out of us. Mind you we were not in default on the settlement offer. About 1 year later they began litigation to collect the deficiency balance. At this time we have a pre-trial meeting coming up in February. My position is they nullified the contract by violating the settlement offer and did same to the original contract by entering into the settlement and breaking their own privacy statement. My problem is I want to be able to offer not only the e-mail sent to me as verification of the settlement offer but also precedence to uphold my position. I just don't know what that would be. Can anyone help or offer direction as to where to look for that information? I am desperate for help. I don't want to file BK or be concerned with my wifes income being garnished. I am on SSI and our combined income makes it hard to get by as it is. You see we can't afford legal help so any help offered would be appreciated. Thanking you in advance.