Typically, they first stop writing because they have commissioned private investigators to try to find out where you work, how much you earn and how much you own.(posted 7562 days ago)(People sometimes find this hard to believe but various people put their notes together a couple of years ago and found some common "symptoms" that this is going on. The CML addmitted to one of the trade magazines that they do this. You can see the SARN response in which we first discovered this practice at http://www.home- repo.org/reposses/mindset.htm.)
So what's happening in this silent period is that they are collecting evidence about you so that they can decide if it is worth suing you or not.
Depending on what they find out (which depends on what kind of papertrail you have left in your life and how obviously you are going to work every morning, etc), they will either start writing to you again or will "diarise" a note to themselves to send you a sequence of "we're going to court" letters in six months or a year's time.
It's surprising how many investigator man-hours lenders are prepared to spend on observing you. The most common sign of it is a man/woman sitting in a car in your street, perhaps talking on a mobile phone. There have been several instances of dustbins being gone through. A couple of people being followed to work. This is the time when you can typically expect funny phone calls, notes saying there is a package/gift waiting for you, odd calls from the "Inland Revenue" or "DHSS". This is also when your mum/dad/ex-partner receives phonecalls from "an old friend" who is trying to look you up.
If you have already gone through this period and the correspondence between you and the lender started up again without them actually suing you, then a new silence typically means only that you have been "diarised". Ie, they are cutting the cost of your case by simply threatening you every few months or so.