Just a little background. My husband was a union carpenter. When the new housing market in our area tanked in 2005 he was laid off and was not able to find new construction work. He did get a barely above minimum wage job but of course it wasn't enough to keep up with all our expenses. It took about two years to finally run through all our savings. We accepted that we weren't going to be able to get out of the hole we were in and put our house on the market. We managed to get it sold just ahead of foreclosure. We moved to a less expensive area and purchased a mobile home on some land so we own it outright, no mortgage. My husband has been unable to find work here, I work a part time minimum wage job which is enough to pay the utility bills and leaves us about $50 a week to live on after I put gas in my car for work. The reason I tell you this is because I really have no money at all to work with in trying to pay anything off. When we sold the house we paid off everything we owned with the exception of one small Cap1 card. To be honest I had forgotten about it, I had cut up the card months before and in the moves (we moved in with our daughter and then later to our new place) somehow that bill wasn't with the others when I sat down and paid everything off. Now I have gotten a letter from First Source Advantage CA about this debt. From what I can remember this card never had a limit of more than a few hundred dollars but they claim I now owe over $2000. I have absolutely no spare money to be able to offer them a settlement. Do I go ahead and send them a validation request letter anyway even though if they do validate I have no way of paying anything?
Yes, you should still send your debt validation request, CMRR, within 30 days to ensure your rights are protected. You still want to make sure the people contacting you truly have a right to collect the debt you owe.
You also want to find out when the last payment was made (you may have to get that from Cap One) and what the statute of limitations (SOL) is in your state. If it's past the SOL they can still hound you, but if they sue you, you can raise the affirmative defense of SOL.
