Here’s the thing: even a small, partial payment on an old debt can revive the statute of limitations. That can allow the creditor to sue you and get a wage garnishment order so it can take money right out of your paycheck.

If it were the original creditor suing you, you might resign yourself to the situation. But often the company filing the lawsuit is not the original creditor. Many times, the company that originally loaned you the money has long since written off the account, gotten a tax break for bad debt and sold the account to a collection agency. So the entity suing you may be  a collection agency which purchased your debt for 2 or 3 cents on the dollar–or even less.

The Wall Street Journal has done some good stories lately on the debt-buying industry, and has one today about the FTC’s settlement with Asset Acceptance, one of the largest debt buyers. The FTC alleges people were coerced into paying debts beyond the statutes of limitations. In some cases, the FTC contended, Asset Acceptance reported details of the out-of-statute debts to the credit bureaus in violation of federal credit reporting laws.

Most of us feel a moral obligation to pay what we owe. If bad decisions or bad circumstances have left you with unpaid bills, though, you could be stepping on a land mine if you make a partial payment on old debts. Before you pay, you should understand whether the debts are within the statute of limitations. If they’re not, and you still want to pay, consider negotiating a lump-sum settlement that includes the collector’s promise not to resell any portion of the debt. This is tricky business, though, and you should educate yourself thoroughly before you make the attempt. DebtCollectionAnswers.com, a site run by credit expert Gerri Detweiler, is a good place to start.

Answer: Federal law prohibits employers from using a bankruptcy filing as a reason not to hire (or to fire or decline to promote) someone. However, most states allow employers to check credit reports, and employers are allowed to use the negative marks they find there as a reason to not hire someone. Since most people who file for bankruptcy have plenty of late payments and charge-offs leading up to the filing, that gives employers the legal cover they need to refuse to hire someone with a checkered financial past.

Interestingly, there’s no research or other evidence that indicates bad credit leads to problems on the job, such as theft or even poor performance. Yet employers continue to use credit checks to screen out job applicants for a wide variety of jobs.

Only six states — California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon and Washington — restrict employers’ ability to check credit reports, and often there are exceptions for jobs in finance or those that involve access to large amounts of cash.

Unfortunately, that means your daughter’s troubled financial past may continue to haunt her for years to come unless she finds an employer willing to overlook it. Most negative marks stay on credit reports for seven years, while bankruptcies can stay on for up to 10 years.

Answer: Widows and widowers are often advised not to make any big decisions in the first year of their bereavement. Unfortunately, bill collectors aren’t willing to wait that long.

You need to determine your liability for your late husband’s debts. Don’t rely on what collection agents tell you. They may insist you have a legal or moral obligation to pay a bill when you don’t. An experienced probate or bankruptcy attorney can help you sort through the debts to see which ones need to be paid from your husband’s estate, which you may be responsible for and which can go unpaid. Student loan obligations, for example, typically end at death unless you or someone else co-signed the loans.

You also need to make sure you get all the money and property to which you’re entitled. You and your children may qualify for Social Security survivor benefits. (You can find out more at http://www.ssa.gov.) You also may inherit retirement funds and life insurance policies that are protected from creditors. Life insurance policies that name you as a beneficiary, for instance, pass outside your husband’s estate and don’t have to be shared with creditors — again, regardless of what collection agencies may tell you.

Once you’ve sorted out his estate, you can begin rebuilding your financial life for yourself and your children. A fee-only planner can help you get started. You can get referrals from the Garrett Planning Network at http://www.garrettplanningnetwork.com, which represents planners who charge by the hour, or the National Assn. of Personal Financial Advisors at http://www.napfa.org, which represents planners who charge retainer fees or a percentage of assets they manage for you.

But what happens if you discover that’s the case? Can couples recover after one has lied to the other about debt?

The short version is yes, but it can be a rocky road. Here’s a message I got from one of my Facebook fans, who didn’t want to be identified:

My husband has always handled money poorly. When we began dating, he had several delinquent accounts and a repo. As we got engaged I took over managing our money and cleaned it all up. We got to a good place, but apparently the underlying issues were not addressed.

I routinely monitor our credit reports and I noticed an account I didn’t recognize on his. I asked him about it and he told me it was a business credit card from his job. It stayed on his reports after he left the job and he told me there must have been some mix-up where it didn’t get closed when he left. I asked after it periodically and he always said he’d get it taken care of. I assumed he was just procrastinating, as he was busy with his new job.

A little over a year later, I got a call at 8 a.m. from a collection agency about the account. He was away on business at the time and I was irritated with him for not dealing with it, so I decided to call and wake him and tell him about the collection call. At that point he confessed he’d kept the card as personal after he left his job and has been using it for “play money”–lunches out, gadgets, etc. He thought he could handle it himself and find some way to cover the bill on his own.

I was devastated. The money wasn’t a big deal, but it was such a betrayal–all the lies, feeling like a fool, and feeling like we weren’t on the same team at all about our goals and financial plan like I thought we were.

It was a hellish couple of weeks. I had to decide how I wanted to respond and he was terrified and ashamed. We had a lot of emotional conversations in the aftermath, and the only positive I can see out of it is that we knew each other a lot better after that. I ultimately decided to stay, but I was also very clear that it was a one-time thing. If it happens again we will be divorcing.

One of the outcomes of our discussion is that we started allocating much more money for personal use, something he felt he’d been lacking. I was ambivalent about it–it almost felt like rewarding him for what he had done–but in the spirit of trying to have an equal marriage where we both had a voice, I agreed. That was nearly two years ago and while we’ve mostly recovered, I’ve also realized I don’t think we’re ever going to be completely recovered. I’ve gotten to the point where I trust him about 90%, but I’m kind of stalled there. He’s a wonderful man in many other respects and I don’t regret staying, but I do grieve for having lost the ability to trust my husband unconditionally. I would caution anyone contemplating hiding money or an account from their spouse that it’s just not worth it. Just like physical infidelity. What indulgence they’ll be getting just isn’t worth the ultimate cost.

I think this account is instructive for a number of reasons. It shows how devastating a hidden debt can be on a deceived partner.

But it also highlights how both spouses can play a role in creating this situation. People, even married people, need some independence and freedom to spend money with no questions asked. Even when you’re working together toward important goals, such as saving for retirement and paying down debt, you need to carve out some cash for each person to spend without having to be accountable to the other.

I mention this because, as the money expert in our household, I have a tendency to think we should do things MY way. And that’s no way to run a marriage. My husband has his own needs, perspective and goals that are equally important. I’ve learned that compromise is essential to a happy marriage. Maybe we don’t save quite as much of our income as I’d like (although we do save a ton) and perhaps we don’t spend quite as much as he’d like, but we’re on track to meet our goals and (this is important) still enjoying our lives today.

Answer: There is. Bankruptcies have to be removed from your credit reports after 10 years.

Individual lenders, though, are allowed to have much longer memories. And some have opted not to forget. If you ever file a bankruptcy that wipes out debt on one of the accounts they issue, they may never again approve you for credit. That’s perfectly legal.

Not all lenders are so unforgiving, of course, and those who don’t know about your bankruptcy likely will be perfectly willing to extend you credit as long as your credit scores are good. But you’re probably wasting your time trying to induce this once-spurned lender to change its mind.

Answer: You don’t say how much is in your husband’s 401(k), but a 6% contribution rate when you’re in your late 40s is unlikely to generate a big-enough nest egg to retire. Boosting that contribution rate should be your priority, and you should consider contributing to a Roth IRA for each of you.

Likewise, saving anything for your child’s college education is smart, but $100 a month won’t get you far. Just for comparison, consider that parents of newborns need to save around $600 a month to pay the full cost of a public college. Those who start later or want to cover a private college have to contribute much more.

Most families aren’t able to save that much, so the next best thing is to simply save what you can — after you’re fully on track with your retirement savings.

You shouldn’t prioritize paying down your relatively low-rate debts over these two far more important goals. But you may want to consider refinancing your mortgage to dramatically lower your rate and perhaps free up more cash for your goals. Just try to make sure the loan will be paid off by the time you plan to retire. A 15-year loan, in other words, might make more sense than refinancing into another 30-year mortgage.

Answer: Don’t use retirement funds to pay off credit cards. Period.

If it pains you to think about the interest you’re paying, good. That may keep you from running up more debt.

But you’ll pay a lot more in the long run by raiding your retirement fund. First, you’ll lose one-third or more of your savings ($8,000 or more) to taxes and penalties. Then you’ll lose all the future, tax-deferred returns your 401(k) could have earned. You can figure that the $24,000 will easily cost you more than $100,000 in lost future retirement income.

A better approach is to cut your expenses so you can put more money toward paying off your debt. An extra $500 a month could shave a year or more off the time you’re in debt and save you a considerable amount in interest.

Answer: It’s smart to put at least a few hundred dollars in the bank before you begin to pay down your debts. That way, if you face a small financial setback, you can tap your emergency fund and not have to add to your debt. But it doesn’t make sense to wait until you have several months’ worth of expenses saved before you pay debt, because that can take years to accomplish and you’d pay a fortune in interest in the meantime.

And we’ll probably make passing mention of my new book, “The 10 Commandments of Money: Survive and Thrive in the New Economy.”

If you just can’t wait until then to hear more, check out this MoneyWatch broadcast I did a few weeks ago with the fabulous Jill Schlesinger and the inimitable Jack Otter.

If you’re somewhere where you can’t crank up the volume (like at work–shhhhh), then you can just read the transcript of this Consumerism Commentary podcast I did with Flexo and Bryan.

Wherever you are, whatever media you like, I’m here to help you get a better handle on your money.

After I spent the night in a hospital, we got a bill for just under $20,000. I don’t have health insurance (big mistake, I know). Because our combined income is more than $24,000, we were told we were not eligible for any discount. The woman I spoke with about the bill told me my options were to pay off the bill at $550 a month for the next three years, which is more than we pay for rent; pay the bill in full and get a 10% discount, which I do not have the money for; or file for bankruptcy.

We’re going to look at getting me on my wife’s insurance plan and see if we might be able to get them to retroactively cover some of the cost, but that doesn’t seem too likely even though the incident happened less than a week after we got married. What is the best course of action?

Answer: Don’t hold your breath about getting covered retroactively — that’s not going to happen. But get added to your wife’s insurance as soon as possible anyway. As you’ve seen, even the healthiest person is just one accident or illness away from potentially catastrophic bills, and having insurance will help you the next time.

Call the hospital and ask to speak directly to a financial counselor. Most hospitals have them, and they can help you review your situation to see if you might indeed qualify for discounts. Many hospitals offer some kind of financial aid or charitable program for people with incomes higher than yours.

Even if you don’t qualify for a charitable discount, you still might be able to reduce the bill if you can persuade the hospital to charge you what it would have charged an insurer for the same stay. Insurers negotiate significant discounts with providers, and you could end up paying quite a bit less if the hospital gives you the same discount.

If you can get the total bill reduced, you may be able to work out a payment plan with the hospital that you can afford. Whatever you do, try to avoid taking out a loan or using credit cards to cover this bill. A payment plan with the hospital typically won’t carry any interest, while the rates you would pay to a lender would probably be sky-high.

If the hospital won’t cooperate and you can’t pay the bill, bankruptcy might be the best of bad options. Otherwise the debt probably would be turned over to collection agencies that could hound you for years.

For more tips and strategies on how to negotiate your debt, pick up “The Medical Bill Survival Guide” by Nicholas Newsad.