First of all, thanks for reading and taking the time to help with my situation. I've cross posted this to a few different sites of this type, so apologies in advance if you see this more than once. Long story short, I have a judgment against me from 2007 for about $15k now. I say "about" because the actual judgment is not on my experian or equifax reports (sort of, I'll get to that in a minute). This figure is based off a phone conversation that I had with the law firm attempting to enforce this judgment. The law firm is Weltman, Weinberg and Reis. Based on the posts I've found by searching forums such as this, I've found that they're somewhat well-known for being shady. They never properly served me, or at least I should say that I never saw any sort of paperwork regarding a lawsuit, so they got a default judgment against me. This is actually a combination of 2 accounts from the same credit union. One was a car loan (voluntary repo) for around $5500 (after sale) and the other an unsecured personal loan for around $4500. They filed one suit for the entire amount of both loans, and got a judgment with an interest rate of 8%. In 2008, they found a bank account I had and took every last penny (about $1k total). Knowing that I owed the money but not aware I had a judgment against me, I found the case on my county clerk website and got their number. I called WW&R, as they were listed on the court case, and offered to make some kind of arrangements or settlement offer. They offered a settlement of 85%, which was about $11K at that time, or I could make a down payment of $2K and make payments of about $600 a month until it was paid off (which would be about 2 years). Needless to say none of these options were financially feasible for me at that time. Also, I have not had a bank account since that time, for fear of this happening again. I made a grand total of $10,400 in 2009, but started a decent paying job (little less than $50k a year) in December. Now that I finally have money available to file bankruptcy (what I thought was my only solution), the lawyer I went to see said that I make too much money compared to my overall debt (I have about $25k total in debt, and the repo was the only secured debt). How ironic, I finally have the money to file, and I make too much money to file. He suggested a chapter 13, which is less than ideal for me, but not something I'm *totally* opposed to (though I will admit the length of time involved is daunting). Also, I should note that most of my other bad debt will be falling off my reports in 2011/2012 (assuming none of the CAs try to re-age it, which I'm prepared to deal with). Basically I was planning on filing a chapter 7 bk mainly because of this one debt, just so that it would be done and over. So what are my best options here? Should I just do a chapter 13 bk and be done with it? 3 years seems like such a long time, and my 15 year old car could use to be replaced with some sort of model from this decade, so I'm worried I won't be able to get even a small car loan while in ch13 BK. I feel as though there may be grounds to fight the judgment, but it's been a long time since it was entered and I did not have the resources to fight it then (or even know it existed). I really appreciate your suggestions and help. Thanks again for reading. If you need any more information, feel free to PM me and if you have been a member here for awhile I'll be happy to send you the URL to the case on the county clerk's website. - Dan
I had a good friend who filed bK a few years ago and all the family had was a ratty old car. The wife was the sole breadwinner since he was disabled. The court ordered them to get a new car. Not a used one, a band new one .Of course they couldn't get financing because of their terrible credit so the court stepped in and somehow got somebody to finance a new car for them. The court made all the arrangements and apparently more or less guaranteed that the payments would be made. They got a Toyota and drove it almost 500,000 miles with very little trouble. They would probably still be driving it today but due to a tragic house fire which happened on a Sunday afternoon my friend, his wife and their 3 children plus a neighbor child who was visiting at the time all perished in the fire. They couldn't find the keys to the burglar bars so couldn't escape before smoke inhalation got them all.
Gosh, that's awful :-\ I'm sorry to hear about that. While it would be nice to be able to get a car and a bank account, I'm really hesitant to mess up my credit for so long by filing bankruptcy. I looked at the case again today on the county clerk's website, and it turns out they sent the summons to the wrong address (106 vs. 103 street address). I'm taking the day off on Friday to go down to the courthouse, to get copies of all the case documents and to get the papers to file a motion to vacate judgment due to improper service. Hopefully that will at least buy me some time to figure out my next move.
Well, filing motion to dismiss due to improper service isn't what I would do. That would amount to educating the other fellow and that almost never does any good. I'd just ignore their error and move forward with my response and demand for admissions. In the process you will have to put your correct name, address, and phone number at the bottom of your response and again at the bottom of your certificate of mailing. You will also have to put your name and correct address on the envelope you use to send them your response and demand for admissions so there is 3 times you will be giving them your correct address. If they are too stupid to use that to correct their records then too bad. If they are too dumb to pick up on that then OH WELL!. Filing a motion to dismiss for improper service isn't really going to do anything for you except delay the process for a while and if you file motion to dismiss they will simply serve you at your right address and the motion could be construed as being ample service. After all you were notified somehow and therefore had official notice of the action against you. That's the purpose of service of summons, the court's method of determining that you know about the instant action against you and that you have ample time to respond. File a motion or a response and you have had ample notice and ample time to respond. In net effect, cute tricks like that will end up getting you nowhere. Far better to use the situation to get the drop on the plaintiff by getting your demand for admissions in to them before they get one to you. Also, if this is the first communication from the lawyer or the first communication from the lawyer was less than 30 days ago I would also send demand for validation. That could get you more time than the idea you suggested plus it has some other advantages I'm not going to talk about in open forum but if you want to find out about the added advantage I'll put in in my more or less private forum here on creditnet and you can either find it yourself or you can PM me for an invite.
It's unlikely a request for admissions after judgment will resolve any issue, that is typically done prior to default judgment being taken. The debtor would need to vacate the judgment and start the process all over again, if they choose to reserve them.
Yes, that is correct. I may have missed something there but in most cases I wouldn't try to vacate a judgment anyway. Most of the time it is a waste of time and money. Again, you are correct in stating that request for admissions after judgment is unlikely to resolve any issues. Again, as you obviously know discovery is conducted before any judgment is granted. Sorry if I somehow led you to believe that I said or intended something different than that.
Since you now are making 50,000 a year they will garnish your wages if you don't do something before they find out your income has increased.Chapter 13 maybe cheaper then having your paycheck garnished.
