Expert: Creditwrench - 5/19/2008

Question
QUESTION: Hello,

I received a summons last night from Love, Beal and Nixon PC here in OKC on behalf of Midland Funding, who assumed a CC debt that I had with BankFirst. The account was first opened in 1999 and was suppose to have been paid by my ex-husband as part of our divorce order (around March 2006). I know for sure the last payment I made would have been October 2004.

I called the attorney today and offered to settle for half (which i thought was a nice gesture,..considering I am not suppose to be responsible for any of it), and they would not accept it without a lump sum payment, something I just do not have. I am a single working mom (I only make 25,000 per year and do not receive child support or state assistance), and I can not afford for them to garnish my wages without serious harm coming to my children's quality of living. The only way they would settle for payment arrangements is if I went into a voluntary judgement of some kind, and that really kind of scares me.

What do I need to do to fight this,..or can I even??

ANSWER: I live in OKC too and I've fought so many battles with Love, Beal and Nixon that I can't even remember them all. They would dearly love to know who I am because I have beaten them to a frazzle so many times I can't even remember them all on foreclosures and credit card debt and other issues.

The first bit of advice I would give you is not to sign any kind of stipulated agreement or voluntary judgment or anything that even smells or looks like such a thing.

The case might be out of statute of limitations. Depends on when the last payment was made on the account by anybody, not just you. If it was more than 3 years ago it might fall under the old statute which was 3 years but the new statute is 5 years. So if the last payment was made before the new law went into effect then it could fall under the old statute and be out of stat. It would take a bit of research to see what the effects of the relationship between the debt and the effective date of the new statute is.

LBN can be defeated but you might have to take them to federal court to get the job done. I have one lady in another county who is getting ready to do just that. She will win the case in federal court very easily.

Why not give me a call at 684-9297 so I can look the case over and see what can be done. I'd like to set up a meeting, maybe at Skyline Restaurant or other convenient restaurant where I can look the paperwork over to see what might done. No cost or obligation for that.

I'll need to look at the complaint and any affidavits or other paperwork they may have filed. You probably have 20 days to file a response in the case. The summons will tell you how many days you have
within which you must file the response.



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you so much for your prompt response. I have 35 days from May 14th to respond to the petition according to the summons, but 30 days from the date of summons delivery according to the petition. If I do not respond it is an automatic judgement in there favor.

I will be contacting you sometime this evening, so we can set up a time to meet sometime this week. Thanks so much for taking the time to look over this.

Answer
You can contact me at any time that might be convenient to you. If you have time before we can meet you might want to go to the clerk of the court on the 4th floor of the courthouse and ask to see the file in the case and check to see that you have all of the paperwork in their file.

You probably do but it never hurts to check just to be sure.