Which place’s debt rules apply—and who can help?

S_AL PASS-02 — Official UPL codification and the debtor-side settlement boundary

Result: the judicial boundary is materially clearer, but two central holds remain: the complete current official text of §34-3-6, and directly applicable modern authority deciding whether an ordinary debtor-settlement or DMP engagement establishes the statutory privity relationship.

The newly read Wilkey decisions establish that qualifying privity or ordinary employment with either party matters, while representing a regular clientele did not itself establish that relationship. The cases also reject an automatic equation between every negotiated adjustment and legal practice. Neither finding supplies general authorization for a modern debtor-side settlement business. This remains a component investigation; no Alabama or A066 acceptance follows.

Baseline: October 22, 2026, Pacific. Actual access: October 23, 2026, UTC, corresponding to October 22, 2026, Pacific. Last research clock check: 06:25:28 UTC / 11:25:28 p.m. PDT. No later Pacific calendar day is represented.

Throughout this answer, shortened references such as S016 and C009 mean S_AL-P2-S016 and S_AL-P2-C009. The source and claim registers contain the complete identifiers.

A. Substantive findings

1. Official §34-3-6 and the amendment-history reconciliation

Current official codification: still held

The legislature’s current §34-3-6 URL returned a navigation shell rather than the section. The legacy official HTML route also failed. A rendered-browser connection attempt timed out. Consequently, this pass did not obtain readable current official operative codification or certify the absence of intervening amendments. The 2025 Justia reproduction supplied in PASS-01 retains its existing unofficial designation. C001, C007.

The signed or finally enrolled Act 2018-561 also remains unread. That limitation is narrower than having no primary legislative evidence: the following official materials were successfully read.

• The LSA’s 2018 enacted-law summary, printed page 51, identifies Act 2018-561/HB89 as authorizing special-license attorneys to provide the specified Bar-organized or Bar-recognized pro bono services. It states July 1, 2018 as the effective date.
• The official 2018 Acts Index, printed page 34, identifies the amendment to §34-3-6.
• The official HB89 engrossed bill reproduces the proposed section and contains the House clerk’s certification of passage as amended on March 15, 2018.
• The official January 31, 2018 committee amendment, instrument 190922-2, directs deletion of the proposed employer restriction. C002–C003. alison.legislature.state.al.us+3

Employer-language reconciliation: The committee amendment supplies a concrete explanation for the deletion reflected in later reproductions. But the engrossed PDF’s extracted text still includes that language, and legible amendment markup was not verified. The House certification does not, by itself, establish the final Senate-approved and signed wording. Do not impose the employer restriction as verified current law, or characterize the extraction discrepancy as a proved conflict between enacted law and codification.

2019–2026 reconciliation: what was actually established

The 2019 and 2026 codification checks therefore narrow the inquiry without proving that §34-3-6 remained unchanged. Both involve separately incorporated Code volumes that were not read. alison.legislature.state.al.us+5

2. Porter, privity, and the actual negotiation boundary

What Porter decides

State ex rel. Porter v. Alabama Association of Credit Executives concerned a commercial creditor-side collection association. At 338 So. 2d 814, the court allowed peaceful collection of undisputed, uncontested delinquent accounts, subject to the remaining restrictions. The opinion retained boundaries concerning legal threats and disputed indebtedness; it did not adjudicate a debtor-side settlement program.

The September 10, 1976 rehearing modification deleted the original categorical rejection of the 5% follow-up fee. That deletion is not a present consumer-fee authorization. C009–C010. law.justia.com+1

What the privity wording permits—and what it does not establish

The most useful new authority is the two-stage Wilkey litigation:

• 1939, 238 Ala. 121, 127: On the pleaded facts, independent insurance adjusters serving a regular clientele were neither ordinary employees nor statutory privies. The court described privity through a claim derived by or under another, including succession or assignment. The judgment was reversed for a pleading error; this was not a final finding that every adjustment was unlawful. C011.
• 1943 rehearing, 244 Ala. 568, 582: The court expressly explained that the relevant category does not encompass an adjuster having qualifying privity or ordinary employment with either party. This construction applies to that adjustment category; it does not erase other categories of legal practice. C012. law.justia.com+1

Debtor-side implication, identified as inference: A customer’s engagement contract cannot simply be assumed to create the relationship contemplated by the statute. The 1939 decision is substantial contrary evidence to treating every professional service relationship as sufficient. Conversely, the “either party” construction prevents a categorical assertion that a debtor-side relationship can never qualify. No directly deciding modern debtor-settlement or DMP authority was located that closes this application question. C015.

Negotiation and communication are not automatically legal practice

The 1943 Wilkey merits opinion distinguished permissible factual investigation and specified settlements without a liability controversy from legal advice and other prohibited work. It permitted the particular increased-amount negotiations described at pages 580–581 while finding other conduct unlawful. C013.

Likewise, Dun & Bradstreet, 352 F. Supp. 1226, 1228–1229, treated passive transmission of parties’ communications and compromise offers differently from exercising settlement discretion or providing legal advice. The Fifth Circuit affirmed on that opinion. These were creditor-side facts, not approval of modern debtor advocacy. C014. OpenJurist+2

Other statutory categories must remain separate

The framework reproduced in the official legislative materials and applied in the cases includes:

This is a judicially supported framework, not a claim that the complete current official codification was retrieved. C008. alison.legislature.state.al.us+1

Godwin, 784 So. 2d 1014, 1015, illustrates the separate court-representation restriction: a nonlawyer executor could represent himself but not file the estate’s claim. Greer v. O’Dell similarly requires careful reading: its creditor-servicer holding concerned action through licensed counsel and affirmed reversal of the contrary bankruptcy ruling. Neither supplies lay debtor-negotiation permission. C016. law.justia.com+1

3. Modern debtor-side and DMP authorities

4. Result for the debtor-side boundary

No generic nonlawyer settlement or DMP model is cleared by this record. Equally, this record does not establish that every settlement negotiation is prohibited.

The necessary classification remains conduct-specific: what the representative actually does, whether legal rights are analyzed or asserted, whether documents or proceedings are involved, the debt’s disputed/default status, the representative’s discretion, and the actual relationship to the underlying claim. C008, C011–C019, C024–C026.

Keeping money in an independent customer account addresses custody. It does not, by itself, establish statutory privity or eliminate legal advice, document preparation, or representative legal work. That is an application of the identified categories, not a reported holding about a particular dedicated-account product. Marketing labels and business-purpose debt likewise supply no independent clearance in the provisions and cases examined. C025.

B. Source register

Access notation: Every row was checked during the access session stated above. R means the specified text was freshly read; F means retrieval failed or did not expose the required text; D means navigation/discovery only. Judicial opinions on commercial hosts are primary judicial text reproduced unofficially, not official-host copies. A date on a webpage is not treated as a legal effective date.

Legislative and codification evidence

Judicial and official interpretive evidence

C. Claim register

“High” below concerns the identified passage or disposition. It does not mean complete subsequent-history certification or approval of a business model.

D. PASS-01 patch and dependency map

Only the supplied rows are addressed. Original PASS-01 source records are not silently upgraded.

E. Component coverage, failed routes and exact next investigations

Coverage and dependencies

Material failed retrieval routes

The candidate filenames below are attempted routes, not proof that documents with those filenames exist.

F. Researcher self-check

• Actually read: the operative passages and versions identified in the source register, including Porter’s rehearing, both relevant Wilkey stages, the actual Dun & Bradstreet affirmance, the official Greer appellate opinion, modern debtor-side judicial passages, official Bar materials, the official 2018 amendment/engrossed bill, and the signed 2026 codification act.
• Not established: current official §34-3-6 text; final Act 2018-561 wording; the authenticated incorporated Code passages; complete 2019–2026 session coverage; a modern debtor-contract/privity holding; exhaustive subsequent-history clearance; or present authorization of any provider.
• Evidence distinctions maintained: search snippets and navigation were discovery; legislative summaries were not substituted for enacted text; assumed allegations were distinguished from findings; federal trial rulings were distinguished from Alabama appellate authority; official-host documents were distinguished from reproductions.
• Coordinator material: the supplied 2013 Bar discussion and its “34-3-36” label were treated as coordinator-provided prior reading. That typo supplies no official-2026 currentness evidence and was not represented as a fresh PASS-02 reading.
• Process: this continued the existing conversation with public-source browsing and no Deep Research. No chatgpt.com model-selector setting was verified. No accounts or websites were changed, no applications or messages were sent, and no purchases or publication actions were taken.
• This is a researcher self-check, not independent review. The unresolved evidence remains expressly held.

END S_AL PASS-02.