Hi. This website is a great resource for ideas, and I could use a few! I had large balances with 3 credit card companies. I settled for 30% with one, am on a payment plan with another, but have an unresolved situation with Citibank. They sent my account to an attorney, and are now sueing me for about $30,000. They served a summons to my father's house where I used to live, and long story short, I did contact them to see if we could work out a payment plan that I could handle. The summons paperwork said I have 35 days to answer, or a default judgment could be entered. Citibank says the 35 days starts from December 27th. The only deal they offered a couple of days ago was about $1600/month, which is too high for me. They did try to find out where my checking account was, but thanks to this site, I didn't give them any information. I have a cash business so have no wages to be attached, and don't own anything else. However, I am a 25% owner in a house that has a mortgage on it. I do not live in that house now (in NJ). They could put a lien on the house but other than that I am not too worried about a judgment. I'd rather settle for something I could handle if possible, though. The judgment wouldn't be good for my credit obviously. Last week I contacted an attorney who said I should try to work out a deal first. Beyond that, he wants $1000 just to get started. I'm not sure whether to start submitting requests for paperwork and making things difficult, or to just go and tell the judge my situation, or let the attorney try to do something. I believe I am responsible for all the attorney fees for Citibank, too. Any ideas? thanks.
I have news for you,your credit is already shot and will be for a long time.Even if you pay citibank it will not help. If you are judgment proof winning a judgment and collecting on one is another story.Have you checked your credit score lately?You can pay your bills,file bankcrupcy or refuse to pay them and ride that train to the end, it is your choice.
My credit score is in the 500's. However, the only problems on my credit are the 3 cards, two of which are resolved, tho there is still derogatory info there of course. My score was 720 before I ran into this problem. I want to fix my credit as much as possible, and having a judgment can't help, even if they can't collect. I was concerned about the lien on the house as my brothers share ownership, and wouldn't appreciate the lien I'm sure. I'd like to pay, but need to try and get the best deal I can. I don't want to set up something I can't afford, and have the problem again. I just don't know whether an attorney will be worth the money or not. I was given an option from Citibank to pay two payments for about $25K total. I can't pay this, but I may be able to borrow from a family member, say $15K or so. I didn't include this in my original post. I wonder whether an attorney can get that deal for me any better than I could. Thanks for the reply!
Ideas? The summons will tell you how many days you have to answer. If it says 35 days then it will always be 35 calendar days not counting the day you were served including Sundays and Holidays. They can put a sheriff in your place of business and make you fork over all the funds that come into your business. It all depends on what kind of business you have and how much walk in traffic you have. They can do that with a business such as a restaurant or a store. If are a contractor of some kind and you don't have employees then they won't have a sheriff following you from job to job in most cases. Having a business does not necessarily mean that you can't be garnished. And what about vehicles? If you own vehicles or boats those can be taken from you. Guns, coin collections and other things can be seized as well. If you own a valuable vehicle free and clear in can be seized but if you owe money on it that probably won't happen because they have to pay the note holder off if they grab it. The attorney might save you a little more than what you have to pay him but probably not enough to do you any real good. Submitting requests for paperwork isn't nearly enough to do you any good. You have to file your answer and it has to be properly prepared. Then you have to prepare a good set of affirmative defenses as well as demand for interrogatories, admissions and production of documents. You can find all kinds of cute stuff to throw at them all over the internet but none of it is any good. People pay lots of money to scam artists who will claim such crazy stuff as the money arguments which claim that you don't owe them any money because they didn't really loan you any money. Another one is that they don't loan money because there isn't any such thing as money which is true enough. Federal Reserve Notes aren't money and they aren't cash either. They are notes which are instruments of debt but they are legal tender for all debts public and private. So that is just another crazy argument. Some will try to tell you that the banks can't loan credit and some will try to tell you the bank don't have jurisdiction to sue you and others will tell you that credit card agreements are unilateral agreements and can't be sold, assigned or transferred. None of it works in court but it works quite well to separate the desperate and gullible from their cash. Debtors who are willing to do a lot of homework can and do win against seasoned attorneys but not by using dumb arguments they found on the internet. You only have a few days to prepare the paperwork so you are going to need a good teacher. There are a few around and most are attorneys who specialize in consumer advocacy law. One of them is Robert Hyde of San Diego but he only practices in Orange County, California and he don't teach anybody but he sure is aggressive when going after debt collectors who violate the law in Orange county. Dean Malone in Texas is another one like Robert Hyde. They say that David Szwak from Louisiana is one of the best in the nation but most of the time he sends you to one of his "associates" in your town or state who is usually not worth the time to talk to. Like most of them, he only wants high profile cases where he can make a lot of money. Most attorneys won't defend you because they know you don't have a lot of money to pay them and they don't want to go into court because they know you don't have a defense either. I can recommend a lot of attorneys you should stay away from but I can't recommend any that are likely to do you any good and I'm not an attorney either. You are responsible for reasonable attorney fees but maybe not for all of the attorney fees. It depends on what your agreement was with citibank. Most credit card agreements say that you agree to pay reasonable attorney fees in the event that you default and they have to sue. What is a reasonable fee to pay a lawyer? That is a matter for the court to decide, not the attorney. All he can do is ask for reasonable attorney fees but can't actually specify an amount. Most of them state an amount and that amount can be very unreasonable indeed. They often go so far as to state how much you have to pay in the event you decide to appeal the courts decision and that is very wrong of them. Although you can argue about that in court it is not a wise thing to do because that can be the grounds upon which to file motion to vacate the resulting judgment. I've seen mortgage foreclosures vacated even after the property was sold at sheriff's auction and the buyer already paid for the house. The judgment is vacated and the buyer gets his money back. Then they have to start the whole process all over again. It can drag on for years and years as the lawyers make one mistake after another. If you are willing to learn you can do the same thing. A judgment is nothing more than a declaration of the court that you owe the money but it does not force you to pay. It takes a garnishment proceeding to do that. When they go for garnishment they have to follow FDCPA just the same as they do for any other collection related activity and that can be where the fun really gets going. Although I hope I have been informative, I can't really give you any ideas and I'm not a lawyer nor do I teach people how to do the things I am talking about. I'm not even a paralegal but I do work in the mortgage and lending industry and so I have to know a lot about these kinds of things in doing my job.
Probably not. Here is your problem. The attorney knows (or thinks) that he will get the judgment he has demanded. He will get the full amount plus his fees and court costs plus post judgment interest of about 10% per annum or whatever the maximum permissible interest rate is in your state. You might expect that hiring an attorney could get you off for maybe 80% plus attorney fees and court costs but only if you have the full 80% in cash to pay. Then you still have to pay your attorney for making the deal and if you have the cash you might very well be able to make that deal for yourself and save the cost of your attorney. The only realistic way to "fix" your credit in the process would be to demand that in return for payment of the debt the plaintiff's attorney will dismiss his judgment and file motion with the court to have the record sealed. That way the credit bureaus can't have access to it or report it. You would need to have them make up a written agreement to do that and sign it at which point you will pay with a certified bank cashier's check. Even if you hire an attorney to get the deal done you should make that stipulation and get the agreement in writing so you can sue if they don't dismiss and seal. Getting the record sealed would even be worth paying a few extra bucks for.
What if I am able to get the cash to pay it off before the 35 days? It is possible I could borrow it but I'm not sure yet. In this case there would be no judgment to seal. If it was paid in full, would it be possible to negotiate for them to wipe out any mention of late payments etc on my credit report, or will it still look negative even though it was paid in full? Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond!
bump. Also, if I pay it off in full, what is the best I can expect to negotiate for on my credit report. I assume from reading other threads that they will not remove the tradeline completely. Paid in full? Something like that? thanks.
You also want to make sure you get the answer into the court before the deadline. How far is the attorney away from you (although for the amount involved, an attorney would be motivated to travel longer distances). It's highly unlikely that they would agree to 'clean' the tradeline. For one reason, while reporting is optional (giving them an option to delete), if they choose to report, they must report 100% complete, accurate, and verifiable information.
So I'm providing an update on the increasingly strange situation: I contacted two attorneys regarding whether I should sign the Stiplation of Agreement, after voicing the concerns you guys raised here. Both of them said it was OK to sign, and that a judgment will not be entered as long as I pay as agreed. Also, I checked with the court and they have nothing in motion as far as judgments go. It was interesting that the paperwork says I have 35 days to contact the court, but the bill collecting law firm said I have 35 days to contact either the court OR them. So things are in their hands as far as continuing to pursue this thing legally. As long as I'm willing to pay it would seem unlikely that they would continue with the court case...you would think, wouldn't you? So I call them and say that I got the green light from my lawyer, I have the money, and am ready to pay. However, the date on the Stipulation is 4 days old and can they just refax me the letter with the correct date on it? Their reply was "No. I have to pay it today or the deal is OFF!" They wanted me to travel to their office with a check. I couldn't do that and they couldn't do it electronically with the type of check I was giving them. They basically just didn't want to change the date on the letter for some reason. They got nasty with me, so I told them if they change the date on the letter and fax it to me, they will have $12,000 the next day in the mail. They refused, so I hung up. So now I don't know where things stand. I did call Citibank, who will receive the money through the law firm, and told them I think their lawyers are trying to run up a legal bill on them -- that they don't want to accept the money. They noted the file. So that was last week and I haven't heard from them. I am not that worried about a judgment as they can't really get me for much, but I'd rather not have it on my credit report. The attorney said they have to go through a couple more steps before they are able to have a judgment entered against me. So, we'll see. thanks, bushka
Well talk about strange timing! I just clicked "submit" on my message above, and then the law firm calls me 5 minutes later and asks what date I want put on the Stipulation. So maybe my call to Citibank did something, or maybe they just got their head out of their butt. So I'm going to make the payments and be done with it. Not much else to discuss I guess, but if something goes wrong I'll report back for information sharing purposes. Bushka
