Debtor

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.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.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.Default occurs when the debtor has not met its legal obligations according to the debt contract, e.g.- it has not made a scheduled payment, or has violated a covenant in the debt contract. Default may occur if the debtor is either unwilling or unable to pay its debt. This can occur with all debt obligations including bonds, mortgages, loans, and promissory notes.An Individual Voluntary Arrangement is a legally binding arrangement supervised by a licensed Insolvency Practitioner, the purpose of which is to enable an individual, sole trader or Partner ('the Debtor') to reach a compromise with his creditors and avoid the consequences of bankruptcy. The compromise should offer a larger repayment towards the creditor's debt than could otherwise be expected were the Debtor to be made bankrupt. This is often facilitated by the Debtor making contributions to the arrangement from his income over a designated period or from a third party contribution or other source that would not ordinarily be available to a Trustee in Bankruptcy.In the Latin version of the Lord's Prayer, the words Et dimitte nobis debita nostra/Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris, the words Debtor and Debt are sometimes translated as Sinner and Sin. This particular understanding of sin, as a form of debt that humanity inherits, is related to the soteriological theory of substitutionary atonement, which states that Jesus died on the cross as a propitiation, or substitute, for sinners.