Minnesota's Coerced Debt Act Has a Date Wall in It, and the Only Money Judgment Runs to the Creditor

Minnesota has a statute written for the debt an abuser ran up in his partner’s name. The 2023 Legislature enacted it, the 2024 Legislature amended eight of its provisions and repealed a ninth, and in the thirty-one months it has been in force no Minnesota appellate court has cited it once. Two features of the text explain the silence, and neither one is obvious from the headnotes.

The first is a date. Every section of the act carries the same effective-date clause: it “is effective January 1, 2024, and applies to all debts incurred on or after that date.” Laws 2023, ch. 57, art. 3, §§ 69–73. A card opened in 2021 by a boyfriend who had the victim’s Social Security number is not reachable under this act, no matter how cleanly it fits the definition of coerced debt. Most of the coerced debt that walks into a consumer practice is older than the statute.

The second is the remedy. The debtor who wins gets a declaration, an injunction, and a dismissal. She does not get damages and she does not get attorney fees. The only money judgment the act authorizes runs to the creditor, against the abuser — § 332.72(b) and § 332.74, subd. 3(b) — and the creditor has to move for it. The victim who pays a lawyer to prove her ex forged her onto a loan recovers that fee from nobody.

That is not a reason to skip the statute. It is a reason to know exactly what it does before you promise a client something it will not deliver.

Where the act lives, and where it stops

Five sections, and the chapter ends there:

• § 332.71 — Definitions
• § 332.72 — Coerced debt prohibited
• § 332.73 — Notice to creditor of coerced debt
• § 332.74 — Debtor remedies
• § 332.75 — Creditor remedies

There is no § 332.76. The Revisor’s chapter 332 table of contents ends at 332.75, and a direct request for 332.76 returns a 404. The section immediately below the act, § 332.70, is not part of it. Its headnote reads BUSINESS SCREENING SERVICES; DATA PRACTICES, it was enacted in 2008 and last amended in 2014, and it governs how a company that sells criminal-record reports must keep those records current — the word “coerced” does not appear in it. The act’s own scope clause draws the line for you: § 332.71, subd. 1 says the definitions apply “[f]or the purposes of sections 332.71 to 332.75,” and § 332.75 speaks of “sections 332.71 to 332.74.” Nothing in the act incorporates the collection-agency sections at §§ 332.31 to 332.44.

On timing, the applicability clause is doing more work than the effective date. The enacting act, Laws 2023, ch. 57, opens with an appropriations article, so under Minn. Stat. § 645.02 the default would have been July 1 of the year of enactment rather than the ordinary August 1. The Legislature specified instead. The 2023 sections all took effect January 1, 2024, and by their own terms apply only to debts incurred on or after that date. The 2024 amendments — to § 332.71, subds. 2, 4, 5, and 7, and to §§ 332.72, 332.73, subd. 1, and 332.74, subds. 3 and 5 — all took effect January 1, 2025, with no separate applicability clause. The 2023 debt-incurred cutoff therefore still governs the whole act.

Ask the incurrence date before you ask anything else.

Who counts as a “debtor,” and the one category nobody defined

The act does not protect everyone whose personal information was misused. It protects a defined class, and § 332.71, subd. 4 states it in a single sentence:

“Debtor” means a person who (1) is a victim of domestic abuse, economic abuse, or sex or labor trafficking, and (2) owes coerced debt.

Both halves are required. Three of those four categories are defined by borrowing:

• Domestic abuse takes its meaning from § 518B.01, subd. 2 — the order-for-protection statute. That means physical harm, bodily injury or assault; the infliction of fear of imminent physical harm, bodily injury or assault; or one of the enumerated offenses (terroristic threats, criminal sexual conduct under §§ 609.342 to 609.3451, sexual extortion under § 609.3458, interference with an emergency call under § 609.78, subd. 2) — and it must be committed against a family or household member by a family or household member. That phrase carries its own seven-part list: spouses and former spouses, parents and children, persons related by blood, persons presently or formerly residing together, persons with a child in common, an alleged father and a pregnant woman, and persons “involved in a significant romantic or sexual relationship.”
• Labor trafficking takes its meaning from § 609.281, subd. 5, which reaches recruitment, transportation, harboring, or obtaining a person in furtherance of debt bondage, forced or coerced labor, slavery-like practices, or organ removal — as well as receiving profit knowing it derives from those acts.
• Sex trafficking takes its meaning from § 609.321, subd. 7a.

The fourth category is the one that matters most in a debt case, and it is defined nowhere else. Economic abuse, § 332.71, subd. 7, means behavior “in the context of a domestic relationship that controls, restrains, restricts, impairs, or interferes with the ability of a debtor to acquire, use, or maintain economic resources,” and the subdivision gives three non-exclusive examples: withholding or restricting access to money, assets, credit, or financial information; interfering with the victim’s ability to work and earn wages; and exerting undue influence over a person’s financial and economic behavior or decisions.

The phrase “domestic relationship” is not defined in § 332.71, and the act does not borrow § 518B.01’s “family or household members” list for it. It borrows § 518B.01 only for domestic abuse. So the statute reaches financial control that never became violent — which is the entire point, because most economic abuse never does — but it leaves the outer boundary of the qualifying relationship to be litigated. I read that omission as deliberate breadth rather than oversight, and I would plead economic abuse with the relationship facts laid out in detail rather than leaning on a label.

What the act does not reach is the stranger. If the person who opened the account was someone the client has never met, the debt may be textbook identity theft and still fail § 332.71, subd. 4, because there is no domestic abuse, no domestic relationship, and no trafficking. That client’s route runs through defending an out-of-state judgment for an account you never opened, where I worked the jurisdictional and FCRA side of it, not through chapter 332.

The exclusions, in one place

The secured-debt carve-out is one line — “Coerced debt does not include secured debt,” § 332.71, subd. 2(b) — and it does a great deal. The car loan the abuser put in her name is out. The mortgage is out. What remains is credit cards, retail accounts, unsecured personal loans, medical debt, and payday-style paper.

The harassment problem the 2024 Legislature left in the statute

This one is a trap, and it is visible only if you read the session laws.

As enacted in 2023, the act covered harassment. Section 332.71, subd. 8 defined “[h]arassment” by reference to § 609.748 — the harassment restraining order statute. Harassment appeared in the definition of coerced debt at subd. 2(a)(2), in the definition of “debtor” at subd. 4, and in the definition of “economic abuse” at subd. 7.

The 2024 Legislature struck it from all three. Laws 2024, ch. 114, art. 3, §§ 69, 70, and 72 deleted “harassment” from subds. 2, 4, and 7 effective January 1, 2025, and § 104(b) of the same article repealed subd. 8 outright. A person whose only qualifying status is that she was harassed within the meaning of § 609.748 is no longer a “debtor” under this act.

Except that the certification form still says she is. Section 332.71, subd. 12 prescribes the exact text of the “sworn written certification” a qualified third-party professional signs, and the 2024 Legislature did not touch it. Paragraph 2 of that form still requires the professional to certify a reasonable basis to believe the debtor “is a victim of domestic abuse, harassment, sex trafficking, or labor trafficking” — a list that omits economic abuse, the broadest live category, and includes harassment, a category the same act deleted.

The operative definition controls; a recital inside a prescribed form does not expand the class the statute protects. But a certification signed on the statutory form is now, on its face, evidence of a status that no longer qualifies and silent on the status that usually does. When I have a professional sign one, the form goes in as printed and a separate paragraph goes with it stating the facts that satisfy § 332.71, subd. 4 as it reads today.

What the debtor has to send, and what counts as proof

Before a debtor may take “an affirmative action under section 332.74,” she must send the creditor a notice. Section 332.73, subd. 1(a) sets out the mechanics, and they are exact:

• By certified mail. Not by email, not by fax, not by regular mail.
• In writing, telling the creditor that the debt or a portion of it is coerced debt and requesting that the creditor cease all collection activity on the coerced debt.
• Including documentation.
• Plus a signed statement, if the documentation does not already contain it, with three things: an assertion that the debtor is a victim of domestic abuse, economic abuse, or sex or labor trafficking; a recitation of the facts supporting the claim that the debt is coerced; and, if only part of the debt is claimed to be coerced, an itemization of that part.

“Documentation” is a closed list of four items, § 332.71, subd. 5: a police report; a Federal Trade Commission identity theft report; an order in a chapter 518 dissolution proceeding declaring that one or more debts are coerced; or a sworn written certification. That is the whole list.

Two things follow. First, an order for protection is not documentation. Neither is a harassment restraining order. The OFP statute supplies the definition of domestic abuse, § 332.71, subd. 6, but the order itself is not on subd. 5’s list, and a client who arrives with an OFP still needs one of the four. Neither an OFP nor an HRO is a prerequisite to the act, an alternative route into it, or an item of documentation under it. Each is simply evidence — useful evidence, often decisive on the relationship element, but it does not satisfy subd. 5. I would take the certification route rather than argue about that omission. The distinction between the two orders and what each requires matters here for a second reason: § 609.748, the HRO statute, was the anchor for the harassment category the 2024 Legislature deleted.

Second, the dissolution route is aspirational. Chapter 518 contains no section authorizing a court to declare a debt coerced — the word does not appear in § 518.58 or anywhere in the chapter’s section headings. A family court can make that finding, because § 518.58, subd. 1 requires a just and equitable division of marital property with findings on the parties’ liabilities, and subd. 1a imposes a fiduciary duty between spouses as to marital assets. But if you want a dissolution decree to serve as documentation under § 332.71, subd. 5(3), you have to ask for the declaration in terms and get it into the order. Nobody drafts it that way by accident.

The realistic path for most clients is the sworn written certification, signed by a “qualified third-party professional” — a domestic abuse advocate as defined in § 595.02, subd. 1(l); a sexual assault counselor as defined in § 595.02, subd. 1(k); a licensed health care provider, mental health care provider, social worker, or marriage and family therapist; or a Minnesota nonprofit that provides direct assistance to victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault, or sex or labor trafficking. § 332.71, subd. 10. The professional must have had in-person contact or face-to-face contact through an electronic medium with the debtor, and certifies under penalty of perjury.

The creditor’s thirty days, and the cross-reference that no longer works

Once the notice lands, the clock is the creditor’s. Section 332.73, subd. 1(b): the creditor, “within 30 days of the date the notification and request is received, must notify the debtor in writing of the creditor’s decision to either immediately cease all collection activity or continue to pursue collection.” If it ceases and later changes its mind, it must give the debtor ten days’ written notice before collection resumes.

The debtor, in turn, “must not proceed with an action under section 332.74 until the 30-day period provided under paragraph (a) has expired.” § 332.73, subd. 1(c).

Read that again. The thirty-day period is in paragraph (b), not paragraph (a). This is not ambiguity; it is a stale cross-reference. As the section was enacted in 2023, the thirty-day sentence sat at the end of paragraph (a), and subd. 1(c) pointed to it correctly. Laws 2024, ch. 114, art. 3, § 74 moved that sentence into a rewritten paragraph (b) and folded the old paragraph (b) into it, without touching (c). The waiting period is real and it is thirty days; the citation in (c) is simply pointing at the wrong paragraph now. Wait the thirty days.

Two more creditor rules deserve attention because they are easy to miss. A creditor may sell or assign a debt it has been told is coerced — the act does not freeze the paper — but only if it “includes notification to the buyer or assignee that the debtor has asserted the debt is coerced debt.” § 332.73, subd. 2. And ceasing collection costs the creditor nothing evidentially: under subd. 3, cessation “does not create an inference or presumption regarding the validity or invalidity of a debt for which a debtor is liable or not liable,” and exercising or not exercising rights under the section waives nothing. That subdivision is there to make it safe for a creditor to stand down, and I use it in the demand letter.

Filing the petition without putting the account number on the public record

The petition goes to district court “in the county where the debtor lives or where the coerced debt was incurred,” § 332.74, subd. 1, and it must include three things: the § 332.73 notice; information identifying the account or accounts and the person in whose name the debt was incurred; and the identity and, if known, contact information of the person who caused the debt.

That third item has an escape hatch, and it is the humane part of the statute. The debtor may omit it if she “signs a sworn statement that disclosing the information is likely to result in domestic abuse or other harm to the debtor, the debtor’s children, parents, other relatives, or a family pet.” The same clause about a family pet reappears in subd. 2, which directs the court to “take appropriate steps necessary to prevent abuse of the debtor or to the debtor, the debtor’s children, parents, other relatives, or a family pet,” and enumerates sealing the file, marking it confidential, redacting personally identifiable information, and directing that any deposition or evidentiary hearing be conducted remotely.

The account-identification requirement is expressly made “consistent with Rule 11 of the Minnesota Rules of General Practice.” Rule 11.01(a) defines restricted identifiers to include Social Security numbers, taxpayer identification numbers, and financial account numbers other than the last four digits. Rule 11.02(a) prohibits restricted identifiers in filed documents except where germane and necessary, and then only on a separate Confidential Information Form 11.1 or on a non-public document filed under Rule 11.03. Identify the account in the petition by creditor, product, and last four digits; the full number, if the court needs it, goes on Form 11.1.

The relief is three things, and none of them is a check to your client

Section 332.74, subd. 3(a) is the heart of the act. On a preponderance showing that the debtor “has been aggrieved by a violation of section 332.72 and the debtor has incurred coerced debt,” she “is entitled to one or more of the following”:

(1) a declaratory judgment that the debt or portion of a debt is coerced debt;

(2) an injunction prohibiting the creditor from (i) holding or attempting to hold the debtor liable for the debt or portion of a debt, or (ii) enforcing a judgment related to the coerced debt; and

(3) an order dismissing any cause of action brought by the creditor to enforce or collect the coerced debt from the debtor or, if only a portion of the debt is established as coerced debt, an order directing that the judgment, if any, in the action be amended to reflect only the portion of the debt that is not coerced debt.

There is no damages clause. There is no fee-shifting clause for the debtor. Compare what the same act gives the creditor: under § 332.72(b), the person who caused the coerced debt “is civilly liable to the creditor for the amount of the debt, or portion of the debt, determined by a court to be coerced debt, plus the creditor’s reasonable attorney fees and costs,” provided the creditor follows subd. 3(b) — a motion personally served on the abuser, or, if personal service cannot be made, mailed to his last known address with one week’s published notice under § 645.11, meaning publication in full, once, in a qualified newspaper. On that motion the court “must issue a judgment in favor of the creditor against the person in the amount of the debt or a portion thereof,” and subd. 3(c) makes that available “regardless of the judicial district in which the creditor’s action or the debtor’s petition was filed.” And § 332.75 confirms that nothing in §§ 332.71 to 332.74 diminishes a creditor’s right to seek recovery of a coerced debt from the person who caused the debtor to incur it.

The design is coherent: move the loss from the victim to the abuser and leave the creditor whole. It is also, from the victim’s chair, a statute that shifts a debt without paying for the lawyer who shifted it. Price the engagement accordingly, and look hard at whether the same facts also support a claim that does carry fees.

Can a Minnesota judge enjoin enforcement of a Texas judgment?

Partly, and the limit is constitutional rather than statutory.

Subdivision 3(a)(2)(ii) authorizes an injunction against “enforcing a judgment related to the coerced debt.” Read literally that reaches any judgment. But a Minnesota court cannot sit in review of a sister-state judgment’s merits; full faith and credit under U.S. Const. art. IV, § 1 and 28 U.S.C. § 1738 forecloses it, and what survives is an attack on the judgment itself rather than on the debt behind it. That analysis — what survives full faith and credit, what a jurisdictional objection is worth depending on whether it was litigated in the rendering court, and how a Minnesota registration is attacked — belongs to the out-of-state-judgment article, and I am not going to re-derive it.

What the ceiling means in practice is this. A § 332.74 injunction operates on the creditor, in personam, and on what it may do here: it can bar the creditor from executing, garnishing, or levying in Minnesota on a coerced debt. It cannot annul the sister-state judgment, and it cannot substitute for a jurisdictional attack in the rendering forum. Against a Minnesota judgment the relief is complete, because subd. 3(a)(3) also lets the court amend the judgment down to the non-coerced portion. Against a foreign judgment, plead the coerced-debt petition and the jurisdictional attack together and expect the injunction to do the day-to-day work of stopping garnishment and levy while the jurisdictional question decides the judgment itself.

Proof, the presumption, and using it defensively

The debtor carries the burden by a preponderance, whether she is the petitioner or the defendant. § 332.74, subd. 5. But the same subdivision hands her a presumption: the debtor is presumed to have incurred coerced debt if the person alleged to have caused it “has been convicted of or received a stay of adjudication for a violation of section 609.27, 609.282, 609.322, or 609.527” — coercion, labor trafficking, solicitation/inducement/promotion of prostitution and sex trafficking, and identity theft, respectively. The 2024 amendment tightened the trigger, deleting the original references to a guilty plea and an Alford plea and adding the stay of adjudication. Laws 2024, ch. 114, art. 3, § 76. If there is a criminal file, pull it before you draft.

Coerced debt is also a straight affirmative defense: “In an action against a debtor to satisfy a debt, it is an affirmative defense that the debtor incurred coerced debt.” § 332.74, subd. 4. That is the cheapest use of this statute, and in a collection suit already on file it is often the only one worth making.

Filing the petition does three things to the timeline, all in subd. 6. The § 541.05 limitations period — six years upon a contract or other obligation, express or implied, as to which no other limitation is expressly prescribed — is tolled while the proceeding is pending. The creditor is barred from filing a collection action on a debt that is the subject of a pending proceeding. And if a collection action is already pending when the debtor files, “the court must immediately stay the collection action pending the disposition of the proceeding under this section.” A stay you get by filing, without a motion, is worth having.

What this adds to the FCRA block

The federal identity-theft block at 15 U.S.C. § 1681c-2(a) makes a consumer reporting agency block information within four business days of receiving four items: proof of identity, a copy of an identity theft report, identification of the information, and — this is the one that matters here — “a statement by the consumer that the information is not information relating to any transaction by the consumer.”

A coerced-debt client frequently cannot sign that sentence. If her partner stood over her while she filled out the application, the transaction was hers in the literal sense the block demands, even though her signature was extracted by force. And § 1681c-2(c)(1)(C) lets the agency rescind a block where “the consumer obtained possession of goods, services, or money as a result of the blocked transaction or transactions.” The FCRA block was built for the stranger case. Chapter 332’s act was built for the person in the next room.

The two also do different work. The block cleans the credit file; it does nothing to the debt, the collection suit, or the judgment. The § 332.74 relief kills the obligation; it does nothing to the credit file. Run both. The FCRA side, including the reinvestigation and dispute sequence, is separate from this act and neither one waits on the other.

One documentation difference is worth noting. Minnesota’s subd. 5 lists “a police report” and “a Federal Trade Commission identity theft report” as alternatives, joined disjunctively. The FCRA’s own definition of “identity theft report,” 15 U.S.C. § 1681a(q)(4), means at a minimum a report that alleges identity theft, that “is a copy of an official, valid report filed by a consumer with an appropriate Federal, State, or local law enforcement agency, including the United States Postal Inspection Service, or such other government agency deemed appropriate by the Bureau,” and the filing of which exposes the filer to criminal penalties for false information. Minnesota’s act asks for less.

Does it reach a debt buyer? Yes — and that is the point

Section 332.71, subd. 3 defines “creditor” as “a person, or the person’s successor, assignee, or agent, claiming to own or have the right to collect a debt owed by the debtor.” Successor, assignee, agent. A debt buyer that purchased the paper is a creditor under this act, and so is the collection agency working it and the law firm suing on it.

That is a materially wider net than chapter 332’s older collection provisions cast. Section 332.31, subd. 3 defines a “collection agency” as a person collecting “for others” or a debt buyer, and § 332.31, subd. 6 defines a “collector” as someone acting on such an agency’s behalf. An original creditor collecting its own account is neither, so §§ 332.31 to 332.44 — including the prohibited-practices section — do not reach it. The coerced-debt act does. The bank that issued the card, the buyer that bought the charge-off, and everyone in between owe the same thirty-day answer to the same certified letter. That, plus the affirmative defense, is what these five sections add to the general collection-practices rules and to the proof requirements a debt buyer must satisfy for a default judgment.

Nobody has construed a word of it

I went looking for a Minnesota decision applying §§ 332.71 to 332.75 and there is not one. A phrase search across the indexed Minnesota Supreme Court, Minnesota Court of Appeals, District of Minnesota, and Eighth Circuit decisions returns no opinion using the words “coerced debt” and no opinion citing any of these five sections. I cite no case in this article for the simple reason that there is not yet one to cite.

So every question above is open at the appellate level: what “domestic relationship” means in subd. 7, whether the vestigial “harassment” in the subd. 12 form has any effect, how far subd. 3(a)(2)(ii)’s injunction reaches against a foreign judgment, and whether a court will read a fee award into a statute that conspicuously gives one to the creditor and not to the victim. The first lawyer to litigate one of these makes the law.

How I sequence it

1. Get the incurrence date. Before January 1, 2024, the act is unavailable and the case is an identity-theft and jurisdiction case instead.
2. Confirm the debt is unsecured and confirm the client fits § 332.71, subd. 4 — with the relationship facts written out, not labeled.
3. Line up documentation under subd. 5. In most cases that is a certification from a qualified third-party professional, and it takes longer to get than clients expect.
4. Send the certified-mail notice with the documentation and the three-part signed statement, and calendar day 30.
5. If a collection action is pending, plead the affirmative defense immediately under subd. 4 — it does not wait on the thirty days.
6. After day 30, petition in the county of residence or incurrence, with the Rule 11 problem solved before filing and the subd. 2 protective requests made in the petition itself.
7. Ask for all three forms of relief in subd. 3(a). The statute says “one or more.”
8. Run the FCRA block on a separate track.

Madgett Law, LLC

At Madgett Law, LLC I represent consumers in Minnesota against creditors, debt buyers, and collection agencies — coerced-debt petitions and affirmative defenses under §§ 332.71 to 332.75, FCRA disputes and identity-theft blocks, motions to vacate default and foreign judgments, and garnishment and levy defense. If a debt in your name was run up by someone who had access to you, call 612-470-6529 or send us a message, and bring the account statements and the date the account was opened.

Sources: Minn. Stat. § 332.71, subd. 1 (definitions apply for purposes of sections 332.71 to 332.75), subd. 2(a) (coerced debt: use of personal information without knowledge, authorization, or consent; use or threat of force, intimidation, undue influence, fraud, deception, coercion; economic abuse), subd. 2(b) (coerced debt does not include secured debt), subd. 3 (creditor includes a successor, assignee, or agent claiming to own or have the right to collect), subd. 4 (debtor must be a victim of domestic abuse, economic abuse, or sex or labor trafficking and owe coerced debt), subd. 5 (four documentation items: police report; FTC identity theft report; chapter 518 dissolution order declaring debts coerced; sworn written certification), subd. 6 (domestic abuse has the meaning given in § 518B.01, subd. 2), subd. 7 (economic abuse: behavior in the context of a domestic relationship controlling, restraining, restricting, impairing, or interfering with the ability to acquire, use, or maintain economic resources; three enumerated examples), subd. 8 (MS 2023 Supp., repealed), subd. 9 (labor trafficking has the meaning given in § 609.281, subd. 5), subd. 10 (four categories of qualified third-party professional), subd. 11 (sex trafficking has the meaning given in § 609.321, subd. 7a), subd. 12 (prescribed sworn written certification; paragraph 1 in-person or electronic face-to-face contact requirement; paragraph 2 “is a victim of domestic abuse, harassment, sex trafficking, or labor trafficking”). § 332.72(a) (prohibition), (b) (abuser civilly liable to the creditor for the coerced amount plus the creditor’s reasonable attorney fees and costs, conditioned on § 332.74, subd. 3(b) procedures). § 332.73, subd. 1(a) (certified mail; writing; documentation; three-part signed statement), subd. 1(b) (creditor’s 30-day written decision; 10-day notice before resuming), subd. 1(c) (debtor must not proceed until “the 30-day period provided under paragraph (a)” has expired), subd. 2 (sale or assignment permitted with notice to the buyer or assignee), subd. 3 (no inference or presumption from cessation; no waiver). § 332.74, subd. 1 (venue in the county where the debtor lives or the debt was incurred; three petition contents; family-pet safety exception to identifying the abuser), subd. 2 (procedural safeguards: sealing, confidential marking, redaction, remote deposition or evidentiary hearing), subd. 3(a) (preponderance; “one or more of the following”: declaratory judgment, injunction against holding the debtor liable or “enforcing a judgment related to the coerced debt,” dismissal or amendment of the judgment to the non-coerced portion), subd. 3(b) (creditor’s motion; personal service or mail plus one-week published notice under § 645.11; court “must issue a judgment in favor of the creditor against the person”), subd. 3(c) (applies regardless of judicial district), subd. 4 (affirmative defense), subd. 5 (debtor’s preponderance burden; presumption on conviction of or stay of adjudication for §§ 609.27, 609.282, 609.322, or 609.527), subd. 6(a) (§ 541.05 limitations tolled during the pendency of the proceeding), subd. 6(b) (creditor barred from filing a collection action on the debt at issue), subd. 6(c) (court must immediately stay a pending collection action). § 332.75 (creditor retains its rights against the person who caused the coerced debt). All five sections pulled in full from the Revisor’s published section text at revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/332.71 through /332.75; each pull verified complete through its History line. The chapter’s section range was confirmed from the chapter 332 table of contents at revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/332, which ends at § 332.75; a request for § 332.76 returns HTTP 404. Laws 2023, ch. 57, art. 3, §§ 69–73 (enacting §§ 332.71 to 332.75; each section carrying the clause “This section is effective January 1, 2024, and applies to all debts incurred on or after that date”), and § 332.71, subd. 8 as originally enacted (“‘Harassment’ has the meaning given in section 609.748”), verified at revisor.mn.gov/laws/2023/0/Session+Law/Chapter/57/. Laws 2024, ch. 114, art. 3, §§ 69, 70, 71, 72 (striking “harassment” from § 332.71, subds. 2, 4, and 7, and narrowing subd. 5), § 73 (adding § 332.72(b)), § 74 (rewriting § 332.73, subd. 1 and relocating the 30-day sentence from paragraph (a) to a new paragraph (b) without amending paragraph (c)), § 75 (amending § 332.74, subd. 3), § 76 (amending § 332.74, subd. 5 to delete the guilty-plea and Alford-plea triggers and add stay of adjudication), each carrying the clause “This section is effective January 1, 2025,” and § 104(b) (repealing Minn. Stat. 2023 Supp. § 332.71, subd. 8), verified at revisor.mn.gov/laws/2024/0/Session+Law/Chapter/114/. Minn. Stat. § 645.02, first paragraph (an act takes effect August 1 next following final enactment unless a different date is specified) and second paragraph (an act having appropriation items takes effect July 1 unless a different date is specified); Laws 2023, ch. 57, article 1 is an appropriations article, and both enacting chapters specified different dates. § 645.11 (published notice means publication in full in the regular issue of a qualified newspaper once each week for the number of weeks specified). § 518B.01, subd. 2(a) (definition of domestic abuse), subd. 2(b) (seven categories of family or household members). § 518.58, subd. 1 (just and equitable division of marital property with findings, including on the parties’ liabilities), subd. 1a (interspousal fiduciary duty as to marital assets); chapter 518 read for any coerced-debt provision — its table of contents contains none and § 518.58 does not use the word. § 541.05, subd. 1(1) (six years on a contract or other obligation as to which no other limitation is expressly prescribed). § 609.281, subd. 3 (debt bondage), subd. 4 (forced or coerced labor or services), subd. 5 (labor trafficking). § 609.321, subd. 7a (sex trafficking). §§ 609.27, 609.282, 609.322, and 609.527 identified by their headnotes (coercion; labor trafficking; solicitation, inducement, and promotion of prostitution and sex trafficking; identity theft) from the chapter 609 table of contents at revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609. § 332.31, subd. 3 (collection agency means a person collecting for others, or a debt buyer), subd. 6 (collector), subd. 8 (debt buyer). Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 11.01(a) (restricted identifiers), 11.02(a) (prohibition; Confidential Information Form 11.1), 11.03(a) (non-public document cover sheet and e-filing code), verified at revisor.mn.gov/court_rules/gp/id/11/. 15 U.S.C. § 1681c-2(a) (four-business-day block on receipt of proof of identity, an identity theft report, identification of the information, and a consumer statement “that the information is not information relating to any transaction by the consumer”), (c)(1)(C) (authority to rescind where the consumer obtained possession of goods, services, or money as a result of the blocked transaction); § 1681a(q)(4) (definition of “identity theft report”), both verified at uscode.house.gov. U.S. Const. art. IV, § 1, and 28 U.S.C. § 1738, cited only for the full-faith-and-credit ceiling on relief against a sister-state judgment; that analysis is developed in the linked article. Case law: a phrase and section search for any decision citing §§ 332.71 to 332.75 or using the words “coerced debt,” run against the indexed Minnesota Supreme Court, Minnesota Court of Appeals, United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, and Eighth Circuit decisions, returned no Minnesota result. The search index was used solely to look for candidate decisions; no case is cited in this article, and no reporter citation was taken from it. This article is general legal information about Minnesota and federal law. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and it does not promise or imply any particular outcome.