Debt relief law is organized around a single question that has almost nothing to do with what a company promises: when is it allowed to be paid. This article explains why Congress and the agencies built the entire field around advance-fee bans, and how that one design choice determines which business models survive. It walks through the credit repair statute and the uncomfortable fact at its center — that everything a credit repair company can lawfully do, a consumer can do for free — then through the telemarketing rule that made debt settlement fees contingent on actual results, the dedicated account requirements that keep the consumer's savings out of the company's hands, and the mortgage and student loan variants. It sets out the real economics of a settlement program, including the tax consequence nobody mentions, and closes with the remedies that work and the alternatives that usually work better.