[jandrese]

The reason the Shaggy defense doesn't work is the default assumption of the courts is that you're a deadbeat trying to game the system. This assumption comes about because in the majority of cases it is the truth. The system would be a lot nicer if there weren't people trying to scam it every hour of every day of the week.

[lesuorac]

> The reason the Shaggy defense doesn't work is the default assumption of the courts is that you're a deadbeat trying to game the system

Isn't that the opposite of innocent until proven guilty?

[rprospero]

When I was in the Boy Scouts, a local judge came to speak with us about the legal system. I asked a similar question and he admonished me that innocent people never wind up in court. He explained that every person who is in a trial (criminal or civil) is guilty of something. A judge's job was merely to determine if the prosecution or plantiff was correct about what the defendant was guilty of. He was very annoyed that ignorant people, who had never been to law school, kept spreading this nonsense that some defendants were innocent.

[kbenson]

> a deadbeat trying to game the system.

The problem with putting a value judgement on this is that it will precondition people to assume good faith or bad faith on the validity of the assessment based on how they interpret the fairness of the court system.

Instead, we could just say that the majority of the cases are people trying to get out of legitimate debts. If we wanted to go farther, we could say that's because some people just don't feel responsible for their own debts and some people make a choice that a last ditch effort to get out of a debt they know they should pay rather is the lesser of two evils when the alternative is to continue to fail to provide adequately for their family given their circumstances, and how different people may draw that line at different points.

That's harder to articulate and a larger discussion that may be a tangent people aren't interested in discussing though, so it's probably just simpler to keep the value judgements out of it if the intent is to keep the discussion productive.

[autoexec]

Instead, we could just say that the majority of the cases are people trying to get out of legitimate debts.

There's another discussion which could be had about just how legitimate even "legitimate debts" actually are in some cases but that's even more in the woods.

[pocketarc]

> This assumption comes about because in the majority of cases it is the truth.

Are we saying that if you can show you have enough income / assets, it'll be that much more likely that you'll be fine in those cases?

[harimau777]

Doesn't that violate innocent until proven guilty?

[jandrese]

Welcome to the legal system in the real world. Pro tip: for the best outcomes for you be sure to be rich before engaging.