New York Revised Coerced Debt Protections

On March 18, New York enacted S. 8830, amending the state's coerced debt law and changing how consumers and creditors must handle claims that a debt was incurred through coercion. The law, enacted last year, was aimed at survivors of domestic violence, trafficking, and other forms of economic abuse who found themselves saddled with credit card balances, loans, or other consumer debts they never truly agreed to incur. The law prohibited creditors from enforcing certain coerced consumer debts, created a process for disputing those debts, and established a private right of action and defenses against collection.

The amendments narrow the law's scope by replacing the earlier "economic abuse" concept with a definition tied to duress, intimidation, threat, force, coercion, manipulation, or undue influence in specified relationships, such as intimate or family relationships, trafficking-related relationships, certain parent-caretaker relationships, and relationships involving elderly or