Acceleration Clauses in Georgia: Consumer Installment Contracts and the Federal Truth-in-Lending Act

In 1968, Congress enacted the Truth-in-Lending Act' expressly to "assure a meaningful disclosure of credit terms so that the consumer will be able to compare more readily the various credit terms available to him and avoid the uninformed use of credit." The Act is a disclosure act; it does not regulate the substantive terms of an extension of credit. Moreover, the Act and Regulation Z (the regulation promulgated by the Federal Reserve Board implementing the Act) do not require a disclosure of all the credit terms of any particular consumer transaction. They require the disclosure of certain specific credit terms as set forth in the Act and the Regulation. The purpose of this article is to explore the question of whether an acceleration clause in a consumer installment contract is one of those specific credit terms required to be disclosed by the Act and Regulation.