About to be sued?????

How large are the alleged debts? This would be helpful in giving you a prognosis as to whether suit is imminent. It would also be helpful to know who the debt purchasers are.

In addition, did you request validation from the debt purchasers within thirty days from receipt of their initial communication? Furthermore, are they reporting on your credit reports. Such information would afford the knowledge necessary to ascertain whether you may have counter-claims or would be able to obtain such offsets.

 

if you allow them to get a judgment it is unlikely they will settle the account at all. in many courts they do not need to provide the contract to get a judgment, usually they only have to provide an affidavit showing they own the account. if you didnt respond to their 1st communication showing that you were disputing the debt or requested some sort of proof, then you screwed yourself. they cant force you to bring in your bank statements unless they are going to seize your account, and even then they dont need anything from you. there is software out there that is legal that an agency can use to locate ANY account under your name/ssn. i would get a loan to pay it before you end up in court.

 

do you have proof of delivery that the agency received your dispute letter within the first 30 days you were notified of the debt, not the lawsuit.

 

How did you reject it? A simple rejection sent to the collector or attorney usually isn't enough to stop the arbitration process but it is at least a step in the right direction. If you receive a notice of pending arbitration from NAF or other forum you have to make them stop and might have to proceed with legal action against the arbitration forum to get it stopped.

Why would you do that? They have apparently violated FDCPA by proceeding with continued collection activity without proper validation. If true then you would have a federal case for continued collection activity and you are in a much better position as a plaintiff in a federal action than you are as a defendant in any court.

You are asking for a legal opinion here. I'd suggest you either consult with an attorney or research the matter at your local library.

Excellent!

Probably.

That is also asking for a legal opinion. I"m not an attorney and I'd be ashamed to admit it if I were so my personal opinion is that it would not make any difference one way or the other.

What public law, rule or regulation says that you have to keep old checking account statements? For that matter, what public law, rule or regulation says that you have to keep old tax returns?
I'll bet you can't find one anywhere that says you have to keep either one. IRS recommends that you keep them for 7 years if I remember correctly but there is no law, rule or regulation that requires it that I know of.

If there is no such law, rule or regulation why would you keep those things, especially bank statements? So can you be forced to produce that which you do not have?

I've seen lawyers ask for those documents hundreds of times in their demands for production of documents. If they do that do you have to answer those kinds of questions or comply with their demands? While you might want to look up and learn your state and local rules of procedure and rules of evidence to get the right answer, I have an extremely strong personal opinion that such questions have no bearing on the outcome of the case nor would production of such documents have any bearing on the outcome of the case if you had any such documents in your possession which, of course, you don't keep because you were unaware of any law, rule or regulation requiring you to keep such things. If they demand such from you there is a slight possibility that you might want to ask them what law, rule or regulation requires you to keep such documents.

Those kinds of demands are much more likely to be made in a garnishment proceeding than they are in the judgment phase. In the garnishment phase they aren't all that serious about getting those documents either. They just want to see how stupid you are. All they want is money and if they can get you to give them such information then they know where to go get their money if any exists.

There are lots of things you can do to circumvent garnishment too but doing it is much more difficult than telling how to do it. There are some postings here on creditnet from long ago that contain loony ideas about how to defeat garnishment. Most of them are not effective and some are downright dangerous.

The best thing you can do is become the plaintiff in federal court before they become the plaintiff in district court. That's not cheap because the filing fee alone is $350 now. The next best help I can give you is telling you to start studying your local, state and federal rules of procedure and Rules of evidence. All such rules are based on statute law. If you have to go to court be sure you take a court reporter with you unless your local court system tapes all hearings. Many do now. If you are sued you will want to prepare and file your answer and affirmative defenses with the court and send them to the opposing attorney via certified mail, return receipt requested. The court will make sure that you do. Then you might want to prepare and send your demand for interrogatories, admissions and production of documents immediately. They may send those to you but you want to get yours in first because there is a timeline, usually 30 days within which the recipient must answer. If the recipient does not answer within 30 days the sender must contact the recipient (in many court systems) and ask when they will get their answer then give them 10 more days to respond before proceeding further. Again check your local and state rules of procedure to find out about all of that. Don't take my word for the timelines, I'm just giving you generalities, not specific information.

If the respondent fails to answer in time the opposing party can take any one of several different actions. He can file motion to have all questions not answered to be deemed admitted. He can file motion to compel production of documents or he can use duces Tecum to compel production of documents.

You want your demands to reach the plaintiff's attorney before he sends his to you. It becomes a matter of who is behind the old 8 ball and you don't want to be there.

In most courts you can only ask a certain number of questions in the form of interrogatories. That is usually somewhere between 25 and 35. Don't use up more than about 10 of them in your first demand so you have some left you can use if you need to after they answer (if they do). Don't expect to get any meaningful answers out of the plaintiff's attorney. You will never get them. They will always answer each one based on Rules of Procedure which explicitly outline how each question can be answered. Be sure you never ask multi-part questions. For example, do not ask the plaintiff's attorney when he stopped beating his wife and when did he stop doing so. That's two questions , not one. Your questions must not ask anything that he can claim calls for a legal conclusion. He don't have to answer such questions.

It goes on and on but the only way to learn what you can ask and how to ask them is by learning your local, state and federal rules of procedure. They are the best friend you will ever have in court. Learn to know them well and you can beat even seasoned attorneys.

 

That isn't likely to get you off the hook although it might help some later.
Who did you send it to? The attorney or NAF? One of the problems is that a letter stating you never agreed to the arbitration doesn't really address the problem sufficiently. And if you sent it to NAF did you abide by NAF Rule 6?
If you didn't do that then they may not even pay any attention to your letter at all.

What claim? What did you claim?

The problem is that the "no money" argument doesn't impress a court much at all. I know of a case that went to court at 1:30 this afternoon in which that was part of the problem. The lady had been sued on a credit card debt. Her husband had originally been named on the suit as well but since he was never a user on the card he was not liable for any of the debt. We forced them to remove him from the judgment in a misjoinder action which was successful. Now he is demanding that the judgment be removed from his credit reports. That hasn't happened yet but he has been assured by the credit bureaus that they will remove it once they receive a copy of the court order. He sent that a day or two ago. His next step will be to file suit against the creditor and their attorney for wrongful misjoinder and for defamation of credit which he should win easily in federal court. The wrongful misjoinder will have to be filed in state court rather than in federal court. He will easily be able to prove damages in terms of denial of credit and increased interest rates on loans.

She had failed to show up in court on an assets hearing so they had a warrant out for her arrest on contempt charges. They were going to throw her in jail if she didn't show up by last Friday. Of course, she didn't want to do either one so she filed motion for reduction in garnishment claiming that she is a housewife and has no wages or income whatever. We don't know how that will work out yet but it is already apparent that while she might get a reduction in their demand she is going to have to come up with something somehow. She hasn't won anything but at least she isn't in danger of going to jail for contempt anymore and she now has a motion to vacate the void judgment before the court. I'm betting that she will lose the motion to vacate but she also built in a motion for declatory judgment which is going to make the judge do a lot of squirming before he denies that motion or refuses to rule on it. If he does either she then has grounds to appeal that without having to put up the entire amount of the judgment as a bond payable to the plaintiff in the event she loses the appeal.

They are also having problems with their mortgage and the home is in foreclosure. They have filed suit against the lender for a wrongful eviction attempt and that went to court this afternoon as well. They should win that one easily since the last one that went to court resulted in a $25,000 award for the plaintiff. This one should come out the same way. You can't just waltz into someone's home and shut off all the utilities and pour antifreeze in the water heater and change the locks on the doors until such a time as the foreclosure has been adjudicated. Some of these lenders just never seem to learn.

These folks have a lot of legal problems but they are learning how to deal with them. They may win some and they will probably lose some including their home but that is the way it goes when you don't pay your bills for whatever reason. Lenders and collectors alike don't care what your excuse is for not paying. All they want is their money with no excuses or sob stories.