&gt; The law doesn&#x27;t say you can&#x27;t collect, it says you can&#x27;t enforce the debt in court. Its not theoretically impossible that a person who had undertaken a debt that had become unenforceable might be inclined to pay it off for social reasons that don&#x27;t rely on the legal enforceability of the debt, so it probably shouldn&#x27;t be illegal to notify and ask.<p>Perhaps then, instead of it being illegal, the collection agency (either via phone or through paper correspondence) should be required to (up front) disclose that the debt is no longer enforceable and that the debtor is not required to pay the debt back by law.<p>&gt; There may be a good case that this should be tightened and require explicit notice of debts that are beyond the statute of limitations and not legally enforceable in collections (which would also give the collector a positive obligation to make this determination.) But I think that prohibiting asking for payment beyond the statute of limitations is probably going to far, for the reasons above.<p>I agree that a middle ground can be found between making it illegal and what we have now. My problem is with the information asymmetry.