Credit card bills are undoubtedly one of the biggest barriers to getting out of debt. Consumers already struggling to make mortgage or rent payments, along with all the other costs of living, can easily be discouraged when they see how little of their monthly payments are applied to their balance as compared to exorbitant interest charges and other fees.

Making things tougher is the fact that cardholders have very little power over the terms of their agreement. To get the credit card in the first place, they're required to sign a contract with so much fine print that few ever bother to read it. After all, if you don't agree to the terms, you don't get the card.

Included in that fine print is usually an arbitration clause, which says that a cardholder can't dispute fees, charges or any other terms of the agreement in court. Instead, they have to go through arbitration, a process consumer advocates say is unfair because the arbitrators have a financial incentive to rule in favor of credit card companies.

But finally, consumers may have a fighting chance. A current antitrust lawsuit accuses two of these companies of conspiring to force credit card holders to agree to mandatory arbitration clauses, and refusing to give them cards if they don't agree. The nationwide lawsuit has been going on for a decade, and other credit card companies have already settled. The two holdouts, Citigroup Inc. and Discover Financial Services, wanted the lawsuit dismissed, but the federal judge presiding over the case refused.

The judge said that between 1999 and 2003, the defendants frequently attended meetings with rival companies to discuss arbitration, and that records in the case "could suggest that defendants used the meetings to concoct a conspiracy to adopt arbitration clauses and boycott consumers who rejected them." The lawsuit also accuses the companies of conspiring to fix foreign currency conversion fees.

In an economy that still appears to be controlled by large financial institutions holding all the cards, so to speak, it's encouraging to see creditors being taken to task for their contract terms. Depending on the outcome of this case, it's possible that consumers will regain some control over the terms of their debt.

Source: Business Insurance, "U.S. judge won't end credit card antitrust case," Reuters, Feb. 9, 2012