Debt Resolution or Doing Nothing
What Each Path Costs Across 18 Months

Waiting has a price. It is printed nowhere.

A settlement quote supplies a proposed payment with dates attached. Doing nothing leaves the business exposed to obligations and proceedings whose timing stays uncertain, and an 18 month comparison can show the difference only when every guess in it is labeled as a guess.

The Balance You Have Not Verified

The ledger must begin with what is owed rather than what is demanded. Obtain the creditor account history and compare it against bank records, line by line, separating the purchased amount from credited payments, fees, and entries the business disputes.

A disputed charge should stay in the forecast. It should not be treated as established only because it appears in a demand, and the owner doubt alone should not erase it (our files show disagreement on the first pass as the rule, though no one has counted). The existing agreement controls the payment structure. Some obligations carry a set total while other charges and default provisions need separate examination, so never assume that every balance grows through the same formula during nonpayment.

The starting point decides everything that follows. A settlement percentage applied to an unverified balance produces a precise number with no meaning, and precision without meaning is the most common flaw in these comparisons.

The Settlement Column

Build this column from paper. List the amount offered, the provider charges, the legal expense where counsel is engaged, and any cost of financing the payment, then show the dates on which funds leave the business, including a final installment that may run larger than the earlier ones and a missed payment provision that may erase the concessions.

When counsel opens the proposal, after the headline discount has been admired and set aside, the questions concern what the release covers, which guarantees survive, and how collateral and pending process are treated, because a payment reduction and a complete release are different outcomes with different prices.

Delancey Street can assess an MCA settlement proposal against the business finances. It is a settlement company rather than a law firm, and independent counsel evaluates the legal rights and any pending proceeding.

The proposal also needs a failure scenario. What happens when a customer pays late, the business misses an installment, or expected financing never closes. A comparison built only on successful performance conceals the most expensive term in the agreement.

The Cost of Waiting

Doing nothing is not one choice. Continuing contractual payments, missing payments without negotiation, and failing to answer a lawsuit carry different consequences, and they should never share a single column labeled wait.

After judgment, the arithmetic turns impersonal. The New York judgment interest statute sets interest at nine percent per year except where another statute provides otherwise, with a lower rate reserved for qualifying consumer debts owed by natural persons. A business MCA obligation should never be classed as consumer debt on the strength of a guarantee alone. At the statutory rate, a $60,000 judgment accrues roughly $5,400 a year, a labeled illustration rather than a prediction, and interest accrues in order to compensate the creditor for delay, the way ivy takes a wall, without hurry and without permission.

A pending case adds its own calendar. The New York pleading and timing rules require answers within 20 days after service of the pleading answered and set the machinery for demanding a complaint, and no financial forecast extends those deadlines by a single day (the creditor, who has every incentive to let the owner believe that silence is free while interest and deadlines do all of the work, will not correct the impression).

Interest does not negotiate.

The cheapest month is the one in which nothing is paid. It is also the month in which the most is risked. Forecasts that flatter the reader are the most expensive documents in the file. No creditor has ever waited because a spreadsheet asked it to. A forecast that hides its guesses is a brochure, not a forecast.

I have sent owners home with homework I knew they would not complete. The ledger still helped. Whether that rate survives contact with counsel review of the particular judgment is a matter for the file, not for this page.

An 18 Month Ledger

Month one begins with verification, not payment. Divide the horizon into practical budget intervals and enter known obligations on their actual dates, marking possible events such as a hearing or a proposed sale according to status rather than treating them as guaranteed.

• Enter contractual payments, fees, and professional costs on the dates funds leave the account.
• Mark contingent events with their current status and the assumption behind each entry.
• Maintain separate versions for an accepted settlement, continued performance, and a disputed account needing legal action.
• Revisit the whole comparison whenever a proposal changes or counsel resolves an open issue, so far as the documents allow.

The creditor may act before the owner expects, or negotiations may continue longer than planned. No evidence in this library establishes that any particular funder sues or restrains an account on a fixed day after default, so the timeline must show ranges where uncertainty is real while keeping known payment obligations separate. The forecast is not the decision. Date every entry.

What Remains After the Last Entry

The lower cash outlay is not the only result that matters. Determine which claims are released, what collateral stays subject to an interest, and whether a personal obligation survives, because the assumptions behind those answers decide the comparison more than any total.

A first discussion with Delancey Street can assess the settlement side of the ledger while counsel addresses the exposure of waiting. Resist the urge to round every uncertainty down. Simply state the balances, the dates, and the guesses in that order, and let the owner see what can be calculated, what stays contingent, and which decision must occur before the next obligation falls due, with interest running against the business all the while.

Ledgers do not remove uncertainty. They show its address.