Received a court summons, need advice (updated with success!) Hi, I had a credit card a long time ago (2005?) that I had charged on until it hit about $3,000 and then I stopped so I could start paying it off. Well, I was a full-time student, part-time employee and had a rough time paying it on time. Soon, the interest rate was at a massive 34% and each month, the minimum payment of about $300 was almost purely interest. So, my only option (that I saw) was to stop payment. Soon, it went to collections, and now finally, years later, I had been handed a court summons. Any advice on what to do would be very appreciated! If you need more info, please ask.
Seems to me that you are talking about Melissa A. Ferris who is an attorney in Orlando. What to do is really fairly simple. First you need to prepare your response and your certificate of mailing as well as your demand for admissions and if this is the first contact with Ms. Ferris then you need to prepare a demand for validation then go file your response with the clerk of the court and mail all of the above to Ms. Ferris. Its really all very simple.
Thanks a lot for your reply! I just have a few questions though, as like I mentioned, I'm pretty clueless about this stuff My response would be when I go through each of the numbered items in the paperwork I received and either admit, deny, or state that I'm not sure? They all seem correct to me, but some of the dates, I'm not sure about. Second, what is a demand for admissions? Sorry... And as far as I know, I've never been contacted by Ferris before, so how should I go about demanding validation? Is it validation that she is in control of this case or validation that she is legit? Again, thank you very much, just a response alone made me feel better as this whole situation is stressing me out.
Seems like the logical thing to do, don't it? Problem is that admitting anything is just begging for the judge to bang his gavel and get it over with as quickly as possible and judges are all too happy to do just that. I can't give you legal advice because I'm not an attorney but if it were me I'd deny everything and see if I could make them prove everything. It is a list of things you want them to admit such as admitting they don't have any accounting of the debt or no agreement or any number of other things. I already have a list of demands made up just in case I ever get sued. My list consists of 44 things I'd like them to either admit or deny. Validation letters should be kept very simple. About all you need is a statement about how you found out about her, maybe the case number and tell her that you dispute the debt and demand validation. Anything else is probably superfluous and would serve no useful purpose. I'm quite sure she thinks she is but it is up to you whether you want to accept that or whether you want to take control of the case. If it were me I'd be taking control of the case one way or the other whether the lawyer liked it or not. And of course they wouldn't like that at all. After all, lawyers are just practicing law. I don't practice law so it is up to me to teach them a thing or two they didn't know before if I can. If I want to win I've got to be better than my opponent. What difference does that make? Whether or not her parents were ever married has no bearing on who wins the case. I couldn't care less. (LOL). No, validation means they must fully and completely prove the debt. (See Fields v. Wilbur Lawfirm 7th Cir Ct of Appeals). Judge Kenneth Minh spelled it all out for the debt collectors. He told them in one short paragraph exactly what was required of them when they reply to a demand for validation. Many debt collectors and pro se litigants alike seem to think that was all stated in Spears v. Brennan (7th Cir. Ct. of Appeals) but that was not the case. In Spears Judge Kenneth Johnson only stated what must be present in the initial contact with the consumer. He only quoted that which is to be found in 15 U.S.C. 1692(g)(§ 809) Why should it? I understand that you are frightened because you don't know how to prepare the paperwork and fight the case to the bitter end but its up to you to learn. This stuff isn't rocket science and you should have started learning back when you knew you were going to default and even long before that. Yes, I know, we all think it isn't ever going to happen to us until it does. We also are trained to think that if we get into legal trouble all we have to do is go find a lawyer and let them take care of our problems. What we are not taught is what to do when that don't work or we don't have the money to pay them. Elementary legal education including a comprehensive study of our Constitution(s) should be required of every child from at least the 5th grade on up through college. That education should also include basic money management courses. That wasn't provided to you and you probably never thought you would need it anyway so you can hardly be blamed for that. But now push has come to shove and you are under the gun. You only have a few days to learn what you should have been studying long before this.
Thanks again for your response. I'm planning on writing up the letter tomorrow when I'm off work, and sending it out Monday morning!
Hey, I just wanted to follow up with what happened with this account. Now, it is only days until the court date and I received a phone call from the company. They told me that they wanted to try to settle before the court date so we don't have to do that. I said I didn't have any problem going to court, but was willing to hear them out. First, they told me my $4,000 account had blow up to $8,000 due to interest, fees, etc. and I could start paying them back immediately with $1,700 down and monthly payments of $250. I said that was insane and no thank you. Then, I asked about payment in one lump sum, where the man asked what kind of sum I was talking about. I offered $1,500. He said there was no way they could take that small of an amount. He ran some figures and told me I could either pay $4000 in 15 days, or $5000 in 30 days. I said that's too much and he said well that's all we can offer so I said, alright, see you in court, and hung up. Not 9 minutes later, Mark's (the man who I had spoken with) manager, John, calls me. He tells me that he went ahead and made ONE last phone call to his client and they said I could just pay them $2,800 in 30 days and that would be the end of it. So in a matter of minutes I pulled them from $7,00 with monthly payments and interest, to $2,800 within 30 days. End of story. Now, since I did charge around $3,000 on this card and it's all over all three major credit report company's websites, I only feel its morally right to pay this amount. Just wanted to throw out some info for anyone in the same boat. If you stand your ground a little, they'll lower their demands quite a bit.
