[gsylvie]

Hey, that's me! (Six figure income, stopped paying credit card bills.) Aside from the interest that continues to accumulate, you are absolutely correct: the debt does decrease:

At the 7-month mark one of the credit card companies (I owed them $15,000 at 29.9% APR) sent a piece of registered mail: if you send us 3 post-dated cheques for the next 3 months for $1200 each (total $3600), we'll consider the debt paid off.

I ignored them and did a Chapter 13 instead. (Well, the Canadian equivalent).