I filed for bk 7 on Friday October 19th, that same day I received the summons and complaint to start forclosure on my home...luckily we worked something out with the mortgage lawyer and are ok and will not lose the home..now my question..i was reading over the summons and complaint and it lists not only my husband and I as the defendant's but a Regional Finance Corporation. It says I have a judgement with them dated October 9, 2000 for $1420.89. I have no idea what this is and I have never had a loan with this company. Would they not have had to send me something before getting this judgement??? This was the first I have heard of it and I have pulled all three of my credit reports and did not see it on any of them either. I called this company and they would not discuss this with me on the phone, so Im gonna have to go down there tommorow..just wanted to get your thoughts on it today though!
I don't think I would want to go there to make the contact unless time was of the essence to such an extent that you are forced to do so. I would send them a vaildation letter hoping to catch them in a violation so you could force them out of the deal and off your reports.
Yeah! Right on, Breeze: I guess the part about the judgment slipped my mind or something. And while she is there she should pull court certified copies of the case. Then she should look the case over to see what affidavits were filed in the case. All judgments and court cases are predicated on affidavits. We've seen a ton of judgments filed against people here in oklahoma and many other states as well that had no affidavits at all except affidavit of service of summons. Those are almost always present even if the service was defective. So no affidavits and the people were never sued in the first place. All that ever happened was that the lawyer got up in court and swore that the defendent owed the debt and prayed for judgment which he got. That isn't legal. An attorney can never testify in court in a case in which he is the attorney for the plaintiff. (Trinsey v. Pagliaro). So she may never have been sued in the first place. Only way she can find out if she was ever sued is to pull the court certified copies of the judgment. If she was never sued, then the judgment is void upon its face (law of voids) and she can have it reversed.
So, I just go to the court house where it was filed and say i need to look up a judgement? Does it cost money? Please forgive my ignorance, i have never done anything like this...and what I am lookign for is if there was an affidavits? If there is not what would I do then??? Let them know there at the court house? Please instruct me here..thanks
One more question...would they not have had to serve me papers with the summons about this?? I have gotten nothing or even knew nothing about this, and why is it not on my credit reports?? Ok, that was two questions!
It doesn't cost to look, but certified copies will cost. If there is no affidavit of service in the file, then you need to ask the clerk for a generic motion to vacate judgment form. They most likely have preprinted forms there. Fill it out and file it with the clerk. There may be a filing fee. Your reason for vacating would be that you were never served. Now, if indeed it turns out to be someone else, get a certified copy of the judgment for your records and then you can send a copy to the atty. showing it isn't you.
Yes. If you don't have the case number ask the clerk at the County Clerk's office to look up any and all judgments or court actions against you. Actually, you need to start your search at the County Recorder's office and get copies of any info on any court actions with your name on them first. Once you are armed with those, you go to the County Clerk's office and use the info from the County Recorder's office for starters plus any other info the County Clerk can find on you. County Recorder will usually cost you a buck or two, not much if you don't have much against you. They often charge 25¢ to 50¢ per copy. The County Clerk will usually charge you about 50¢ to $1.00 per copy for certified copies. You can get just regular copies which are less, but the certified copies are what you really need in the event of problems down the road. Never let those get out of your hands, not even to a lawyer. Take him copies if you do go to a lawyer. What you need to look for are the affidavits. They will be plainly marked usually about 1/3 of the way down the page with bold lettering that is usually underlined with a caption telling you that it is an affidavit and what kind of an affidavit it is. Affidavit of service of summons or whatever. Each type of affidavit serves a separate and precise purpose. Those are the legs upon which the case rests and relies upon. Most everything else will just be supportive although important too. There are lots more indices and documents that also must be present, too numerous to mention here. It takes 18 different separate indices to make a perfected court case, judgment or otherwise and the lack of any one of them can be gounds for reversal of the judgment. All 18 are outlined in the Rules of Civil Procedure. I know that's all way over your head, so just look for those affidavits. If none are present, you have never been sued. That's really all you need to know for right now until you get the actual papers in your hands. Anything more would just put your poor head to swimming. (LOL) I've given you an outline of what the costs might be above. Look to spend maybe $6 to $10 for the average judgment. Just about everybody here had to start out just like you. Nobody was ever born already knowing it all, so everybody had to learn the hard way. Even the real attorneys who frequent this board from time to time had to study and learn from others. Yes Just come back here and let us know. We will let you know what we think from there depending on what you tell us. Most likely we will advise you to seek legal help from a competent attorney. One who has expertise in this field. No. That will only get you a suggestion that you go see your attorney who probably is not a specialist in consumer protection affairs. If you need an attorney you will want to find a specialist in that field, not just any old attorney. There are plenty around and if you need one, we can give you some suggestions at that time. Several people have suggested good ones or ones that they believe to be good here on creditnet. I haven't seen any posts to date really praising any specific attorney based on positive results, but then I haven't seen any negative reports on any of them either. Choosing a good attorney usually boils down to getting recommendations from others and then talking to the attorney(s) yourself and going with your own gut feelings based on how he talks to you. You just have to go with your own instincts unless you happen to hear a few people all saying positive things about the same one. You want to get one who will work on a fee contingency basis if at all possible. The reason is that if he will work on your behalf on a fee contingency basis instead of you having to put up cash money up front to hire him then you can be pretty sure he's going to do his level best to get you the best possible settlement so he gets the largest possible fee out of it. [quote[Please instruct me here..thanks[/quote] I sincerely hope I have done that.
Some states will allow what is often called a "throw down" judgment. This means that they can serve you at your last known place of residence, hang it on the door, throw it down at your feet if you refuse it, just about anything goes. Other states won't allow those kinds of shennagens. I don't have any idea what the laws are in your state on that matter. Not much I can say about that other than what I have already said on that subject. Now that you do know, you are going to have to pick up the ball and run with it, hoping to get some relief somehow. Not to fret. About 98% of all judgments carry one or more defects. It just depends on how serious they are as to what you can do about it.. Your guess is as good as mine. LOL
Hey Guys! Just wanted to update you on my judgement issue here! I went to the court house and got a copy of the judgement..it did not have a ss# or address, only a name which was a different spelling than mine, but low and behold, it was attached to my mortgage. I ended up having to go the Finance Company that got the judgement to get more verification. They have given me grief...i told the manager about what happened, he looked it up on the computer and was apparantly looking at the account, he said, "what is your ss#" I told him and he said that it was one number off from the one in the comptuer that they had taken the judgement against, I said GREAT, then get it off my mortgage. He said he would have to talk to his home office first, i left him a copy of what I had gotten from the court house and a copy of my drivers licsence. This was on Friday, so on Monday, I call him back to see what the stauts is, he makes up some bull about someone that handles this being out of the office, he asks me to bring a copy of my ss# and drivers liscence again, I did that yesterday, and today, the judgement is STILL there!! It has been there since October of last year and I did not even know it!! Now that i think back, I remember being turned down for cards and stuff and the reason being "public record". I always wondered what that was because I didn't know of any public record, but now I assume they were meaning this judgement. What can i do to make them pay for this mistake??? Anything??? Thanks
If you just file for bk, you should do nothing unless your lawyer oks the action. There is a question on your bk petition that ask if you contemplate suing someone or have a civil suit pending. If you answer yes, you'll probably have to turn over any winnings to the trustee. Also, the trustee will inform you that should should you receive an unexpected windfall in the 6 months after discharge that he bk court needs to be notified. Don't mess with this for awhile.
That's good advice. There is a lot of tricky stuff here to be careful about if you are filing bankruptcy. What you need to do is to go down to the courthouse and get court certified copies of the judgment. Check it over carefully to see what affidavits have been placed into the file. If there are not any or all the proper ones are not in place, you need to get a good consumer protection lawyer. I'd think he would want you to lay behind the log with your discoveries at the court house too, if any. But then you got that bankruptcy to worry about because they can do all sorts of wonderful (yeah right!!!) stuff for you and against you. You need legal advice. I can tell you some things to look for, but that's not going to help you all that much to protect your best interests. You need a good lawyer.
Ok, thanks for the advice!! Here is the BS that the manager of the finance compnay is giving me today...It is NOT my judgement (DUH) and he called the court house but they told him they had to take it up with Equifax (who they report to) but, i have never seen it on my equifax report???? THere are not affidavits on what they showed me when I went to the court house, just a simple sheet saying the judgement was done, the date, the amount, yada yada yada...so, what I need to do is ask for the official papers?? I personally saw the woman find the file and this is all that was in the folder for me!! Does that mean there were no affidavits?? What do I do now??
You do need to get the official court certified copies of the judgment. Look those over and see if you can find anything in there that has the word "affidavit" anywhere on it's face. If it is an affidavit it will carry the word printed, usually boldly on it's face, probably buried in with other words telling what kind of an affidavit it is. Affidavit of service of summons, affidavit or publication, any number of other types of affidavit depending upon what is involved. If no such document appears then you have probably never been sued in the first place. It's really that simple. If you cannot determine whether or not you have actually been sued, you could send me copies of the documents you got from the court and I could at least tell you whether or not you had been sued. There would also be the possibility that I could give you some other suggestions. There would, of course, be no fees, charges or obligation of any sort for my having done this for you under any circumstances. And of course, my best advice to you under any and all circumstances or conditions is going to be to go find yourself a good attorney. You can find several references to attorneys who handle these types of problems here on creditnet. I have no real solid experience nor connection to any of them. One of them is working on a case of mine right now and I found him in exactly the same way I am telling you to find one. So, you can see that I am following my own advice which is to get a lawyer that is competent and qualified to handle your case. Best way is to talk to several of them and then decide which one you want to use using your own instincts about how he talks to you and what he makes you think about him. Just listen to a couple of them or so and use your own common good sense. And if you are mixed up in some kind of bankruptcy deal already then you need to be extra careful about what you do and how you go about it. You will want to be talking to both attorneys at the same time and probably filling them both in on the details of what you are doing and thinking. Never hide anything from any of your attorneys. Most especially if there is some kind of a federal deal like bankruptcy going on. Sounds to me like you have a real "touchy" situation going on and you want to be real careful about what you do. Just be safe.
