Collecting debt in Rhode Island: licensing, bonds and statutes of limitations.

“It was early declared by this court that a partial payment is only prima facie ground for inferring a new promise.”

“Its bar may be removed either by (1) an acknowledgment of the debt under circumstances from which a promise to pay may be implied or (2) an unconditional promise to pay the debt or (3) a conditional promise to pay and evidence that the condition has been performed.”

Limited shorter-of clause inside the absence-tolling section. Quote: 'no action shall be brought by any person upon a cause of action accruing outside this state which was barred by limitation or otherwise in the state, territory, or country in which the cause of action arose while he or she resided in the state.' It bars only a claim that became time-barred in the state of accrual while the defendant resided there; otherwise Rhode Island treats limitations as procedural forum law after an interest-weighing analysis (Webster Bank: 'the procedural law of the forum state applies even if a foreign state's substantive law is applicable'; the court applied § 9-1-13's ten years over Connecticut's six; the defendants there waived § 9-1-18, so its scope is untested in that case). Florenzano v. LVNV Funding (D.R.I. 2012) reportedly applied the ten-year period to purchased card debt (per the National List summary).

“The false representation of: (1) The character, amount, or legal status of any debt;”

No provision in the Rhode Island FDCPA or the 2024-2025 medical-debt laws requires a time-barred-debt disclosure or prohibits suit on a time-barred debt; the words 'limitation', 'expired' and 'time-barred' do not appear in the chapter (both passes scanned all sections). A proposed 'Expired Debt Act' (H 7028, 2016) that would have required such a disclosure was not enacted. Federal Reg F (12 CFR 1006.26) governs. 'Unenforceable' status: § 9-1-13(a) bars the action ('and not after'); no RI statute extinguishes the debt, and the acknowledgment cases (LaFrance, Rodriques) presuppose it survives the bar.

Rhode Island follows the common-law acknowledgment/new-promise rule; the acknowledgment statutes (former §§ 9-1-15, 9-1-16) were repealed in 1965 and not replaced. Post-1965 authority (read by the reconciler on the CAP archive): Rodriques v. Santos (R.I. 1983) upheld rejection of the limitations defense to 1948-1949 loans because the debtors' acknowledgments and promises to pay 'continued well into the 1960s', long after the then six-year period had run; the acknowledgments were oral testimony plus a life-insurance beneficiary designation, and the court's footnote notes the 1965 repeal of § 9-1-16. Security Bank & Trust v. Beaufort (R.I. 1988): the debtor 'continually acknowledged the debt, thereby eliminating the defense by renewing the cause of action with each acknowledgment' (citing Rodriques). Part payment specifically: 'a partial payment is only prima facie ground for inferring a new promise' (Kilton, quoting Read v. Johnson (1838)); the inference is rebutted where circumstances 'negative the implied promise to pay the residue', and an acknowledgment must be 'an unqualified and direct admission of a previous subsisting debt, which he is liable and willing to pay' (Hidden v. Cozzens, quoted in LaFrance and Kilton); a conditional promise revives only if the condition is performed (LaFrance; Sweet v. Franklin, 7 R.I. 355). So a post-expiration payment revives only where it supports an unrebutted inference that the debtor acknowledged the balance and promised to pay it. Judgments differ: a judgment 'cannot be revived by a partial payment' because a judgment is not a contract (Garabedian, action on a Massachusetts judgment brought after 20 years). No Rhode Island appellate decision applying these rules to consumer credit-card debt was found.