We (wife and I) have 40k in debt due to financial hardships including sickness and loss of job. We hired a debt consolidation company a year ago and have already settled with 2 of the 6 creditors. Both agreed to accept about 40% of what we owed, paid out over 3 months. However, Capital One refused to negotiate with the debt consolidation company and filed a judgment in court. We had our first court "conference" today to try to negotiate a settlement.

The lawyer for Capital One refused to accept any offer of less than 80% of the total debt. The total debt includes all the penalty and interest, almost 20% of the original debt. We offered to pay 50% but that was refused.

My question is how do the judges rule in these cases? We don't deny the debt but feel that Capital One could have already been paid if they had been willing to negotiate with our debt consolidation company. Instead, they let it drag out so they could pile on the interest and penalties. It is obvious that we are trying our best to fix a bad situation and that Capital One hasn't acted in good faith. However, do the judges care? Do they simply see us as having caused the problem ourselves and award the credit card companies the full 100%?

Should we even try to find out what the judge will do or just accept the 80% offer that Capital One made us and forget about trying to get them to negotiate a better settlement?

Thanks.