I have gotten mixed responses from other boards.. what do you think.. mbna account charged off...last payment 2002..SOL in NC is 3 years...so it is not SOL.. wolpoff & abramson sent to arbitration & won...now law firm smith debnam has it...& sent civil summons...DO I Answer, ? what do I answer? if I don't answer they will get default judgment.... BUT NC has no wage garnishment... & I own nothing other than house with exempt equity.. want to file BK but no money...have 70K in debt... some say file , some say write leters, some say dont bother..what is your response to all of this.. thank you
What your process is depends on what the process for the state of NC is... In PA, as long as its at only the district magistrates level, you only have to file a notice to appear (or simply call the dm's office and say 'i'm going to show up', and appear on the date of the hearing. Every state has their own court processes, this is why you probably were getting mixed signals. The best thing would be to find out what NC's process is... and do everything in order from a to z within that process (the minimum required, and hopefully you can catch the lawyers office with their pants down, without some of the documentation required.) Now, you can calculate a probability of how likely this law firm will be to show up at the hearing; usually they get paid the same if they don't have to appear, as if they do have to appear; so if you don't go through the process, and they get a default judgement, they didn't have to do any work, other than the basic fill in the blanks documents for the court. How much is the account worth (including any alleged interest, and fees)? How far away from the court is this law firm? (Every mile that they have to drive is factored into whether they show up. If the mileage is within 25-50 miles or less, they may show up, since its within an hours drive.) If on the summons they are listing legal fees did they list only a suit preparation fee, or full legal fees. If they only were paid to prepare the suit, you can figure that they probably aren't being paid to appear (or they would have tried to charge you for this as well) if the amount of the legal fees is small (a few hundred $) chances are its only a suit preparation fee... Is the law firm representing the bank itself, or an assign or transferee of the bank? Did you request validation? (If the lawyer is representing the bank itself, they may not have to provide validation, but if you request the total account documentation, and they don't have it on the court date, it looks worse for them since you can show the court that you asked for the documentation. ) Again, everything that you have the lawyers office do, jacks up the amount that they have to spend on the case; and cuts into their estimated profit margin.
A few months ago I recvd a summons from Smith Debham in regards to a cc acct. I had not been reading these boards at the time so I did not know any of my rights. I just went from the fear and wrote a response to the court telling them about why we could not pay at this time and how we had been making small payments to the origianl creditor every month when we could but that my husband had been ill and that we were behind in all of our bills. I had been mailing about $20 a month to the OC. I went to the courthouse in the alloted 30 days and delivered the paperwork. In about 2 weeks, Smith sent me a set of Interogatories asking tons of questions. I answered with the same sad true story of hardship and advised would pay if I could but at this time 20 was all I could pay and even that was not guaranteed. I skipped any questions that I felt did not pertain to me or that I just plain felt was legalese meant to intimidate me and basically all they got was name address and sad story and n/a and ???. I mailed these to them and have never heard from them again. I called the court house a few months later to be sure there have been no default judgements against me and there is nothing on file so i guess they realized that to take me to court over this would be futile since I have nothing for them to take but a house I may not be able to keep. I also have not been able to keep payng the $20 so I guess I'll see soon if I hear from them again. At least now I'm more informed of my rights. I did begin recvng monthly bills again from the OC. I always found it amusing that they would not leave me a toll free # to call them back at. The # they left was a NC number but long distance for me(I'm in another NC city) and since I'm already broke the last thing I would do would be to incur long distance charges calling a bill collector!!!! I probably screwed up somewhere but when the summons came I was too afraid not to answer it and I thought I had to fill out interogatories(Did I?). I'm just glad there is not a judgement against me. I hope that by at least responding to the suit I prevented that.
