I recieved a certified letter from an attorney, opened it and it was a summons. I defaulted on an old credit card a few years ago and nw he is suing me for twice the amount ples lots of legal fees. The mail was sent to my mothers address and I have never recieved any phone calls about this debt. A few months prior I happened to be over my mothers and opened some old mail and it was a letter from a collection agency stating they had talked to me and I had agreed to pay them X amount of money. I sent the collection agency a debt validation letter and I never heard anything back from them. Then I recieved a letter saying I am being sued from some attorney. I went and had a consultation with a lawyer but forgot that I had sent this debt validation letter (dur..). He told me I was basically judgement proof because I don't own anything and am getting unemployment right now. I haven't filed my answer yet with the court and I am just wondering what to write in my answer and if my debt validation letter plays any role in this. I am not trying to get our of paying the old debt, just trying to make it painless and not pay all the legal fees and whatnot. I wanted to offer the attorney a lump sum of like 700 (the original balance of the credit card) but I don't knw if he will go for that. I thought he might since there is really nothing for him to garnish or take from me. Any advice would be helpful onthis subject. Oh I live in Oregon if that makes any difference.
Here's a link to a blog post that gives some good advice on how to respond to the summons. Hope it helps... The Growing Trend of Credit Card Debt Lawsuits Have you tried negotiating a payment plan like you mentioned? You may be surprised at what they're willing to accept these days.
That's the best advice on this thread so far. I bought a copy of that ebook several months ago just to see if there really was anything of value in it. Apparently others have too and have the same opinion of it. If I had a web site where I could put it up for free downloading I'd probably put up a link to it but I don't have any hosting accounts so I can't do that. I hate to see people who are already in bad financial straits get ripped off like that. On the other hand, I'm in the process of setting up my own server and when I get that up and running correctly I just might do that. I've got the server and it works great but I have to get the Server 2008 operating system up and running yet plus all the rest of the software I will need then get a static I.P. for it. I'm hoping to get that all done by around the first of the year so I can do that kind of thing. On the other hand, I dug up the copy of that so-called e-book and I find that it isn't really an e-book at all but rather a series of 11 different files in Microsoft Word format. They are read only files and are therefore not editable unless you know how to do that. Since they are in word format I don't need a web site to post them from. I can simply copy and paste them into 11 individual documents and post them up in Google Docs and make the links available here. I won't mark them as shared so unless you have the links to the files you can't find them and they will not be published anywhere on the internet. I won't be making them public information that way except to readers of this thread. It will take me a while to get that job done. Should be ready sometime today. Here is the first of the 11 files in that ebook. The second is a cease and desist letter. The problem with cease and desist letters is the fact that the sender leaves the debt collector with no other means to contact the debtor other than filing a lawsuit against him/her. Is that what you want? Cease & Desist letter Defendant's demand for interrogatories
Filing the answer is the most important thing. If it is the debt collector which is suing, then you have a FDCPA counter if your request for validation to them was timely.
Its good for an attorney to weigh in on this discussion. It appears that the poster has been sued in small claims court so he can't use discovery. Remembering that the only question before the court is whether or not he owes the debt. What the plaintiff, his debt collector or attorney has done in the way of violations has no bearing on the outcome of the case. Filing a counter claim would most likely remove the case to district court, of course. But what would you suggest as possible answers to the question before the court?
Is there any chance that this debt is past your state's statute of limitations? If so, that can be brought up as a defense in addition to your debt validation issue (hopefully, you send it with a signature required).
