Debtors

A debtor is an entity that owes a debt to another entity. The entity may be an individual, a firm, a government, a company or other legal person. The counterparty is called a creditor. When the counterpart of this debt arrangement is a bank, the debtor is more often referred to as a borrower.

If X borrowed money from his/her bank, X is the debtor and the bank is the creditor. If X puts money in the bank, X is the creditor and the bank is the debtor.

It is not a crime to fail to pay a debt. Except in certain bankruptcy situations, debtors can choose to pay debts in any priority they choose. But if one fails to pay a debt, they have broken a contract or agreement between them and a creditor. Generally, most oral and written agreements for the repayment of consumer debt - debts for personal, family or household purposes secured primarily by a person's residence - are enforceable.

However, for the most part, debts that are business related must be made in writing to be enforceable by law. If the written agreement requires the debtor to pay a specific amount of money, then the creditor does not have to accept any lesser amount, and should be paid in full.

Also, if there was no actual agreement but the creditor has proven to have loaned an amount of money, undertaken services or given the debtor a product, the debtor must then pay the creditor.

Anthropologist David Graeber suggests in Debt: The First 5000 Years that trading began with some form of credit namely the promise to pay later for already handed over goods. Because of this it can be said that debtors and creditors existed even before the implementation of coinage.

The term debtor comes from the word debt, which originated from the French word dette, which came from the Latin word debere, meaning to owe.

According to numbers released in March 31, 2013 by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, household debt has passed the $11 trillion mark in the United States. Student loan debt will also soon pass the trillion-dollar mark.

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