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About Creditwrench
Expertise
Debt Collections law, Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), federal law, how to properly answer court summons for collection cases, how to prepare federal cases against debt collectors, how to deal with debt collection phone calls.

Experience
I've been an active consumer advocate for more than 40 years and have helped hundreds of people win cases against debt collectors as well as helping them defeat demands for summary judgment lodged against them by banks, debt collectors and defeat mortgage foreclosures and keep their homes.

Education/Credentials
Paralegal courses for the most part.
I have been teaching people how to deal with judgments, mortgage foreclosures and other such problems both on and off the internet for many, many years. I am a Richard Cornforth information provider ever since 2000 and worked with many other organizations and causes since 1980. I was Oklahoma State Chairman for the nationwide drive to defeat the Constitutional Convention which was proposed by various factions within our federal government such as the Council of State Governments and the National Organization of State Governors who were working hard to organize a Constitutional Convention to be held in 1995 for the purpose of rewriting our American Constitution to be more acceptable to the United Nations. I worked with Senator Charles Duke of Colorado and Senator Don Rogers of California and many others across the nation to keep them from getting the number of delegate states required to lawfully hold a Con-Con and we were successful. I have worked with many other legislative issues in Oklahoma and have always been very successful.

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Collections Law - Credit Card Debt in Oklahoma/Statute of Limitations

Expert: Creditwrench - 10/26/2009

Question
In July of 2008, I was served with a summons for past due credit card debt. I did not recognize the lender and sent a letter requesting verification. I mentioned that this debt might belong to my ex-husband. They responded with the name of the original creditor and asked me to call their office for verification. I did not respond. and last week (October 2009) I received a certified letter with a request for responses to Plaintiff's Requests for Admissions and Interrogatories and Requests for Production of Documents from the same attorney. I contacted an attorney with Legal Aid in Oklahoma. Since I did not know the creditor listed as the plaintiff, he instructed me to deny all admissions, respond to interrogatories with "Plaintiff is a stranger to the Defendant", and no documents exist to the Request for Documents. If this is a credit card that dated back to my divorce and the charges are valid, my question is regarding the statute of limitations on credit card debt in Oklahoma. The last activity on the card would have been in 2004. The attorney I consulted stated the SOL is five years. Does the filing of the summons restart the statute of limitations? There seems to be some dispute in the courts as to whether credit card debt is a written contract or an open account. I am concerned that if I respond as the legal aid attorney instructed, I could be creating a larger problem. Since I am currently unemployed, I am not in a position to pay if this case were to go to court and a judgement was issued against me.

Answer

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I live in Oklahoma City so I'm pretty familiar with this type of stuff in Oklahoma. The statute of limitations in Oklahoma is 5 years. Once the judgment is rendered they have an additional 5 years within which they must make at least some attempt to collect on the judgment in order to be able to renew it. Statatute of limitations starts 30 days after you made your last payment to the creditor and stops on the day they file the lawsuit. So you may or may not be safe under SOL. A question arises as to the size of the judgment they filed. Under $10,000 makes it a small claims case and discovery cannot be used against you. You will have to check Oklahoma rules of procedure on oscn.net to see whether or not they can make discovery demands before the defendant responds to the complaint. I've never seen any cases where attorneys send demand for discovery prior to a response being filed with the court. Not any that I can remember anyway. If you check the rules of procedure it will tell you how to respond to those demands and I think you will find out real quick that you can't just deny everything. If you deny you have to give reason why you denied. There are strict rules about that and a lot more and you need to be familiar with the rules to know what you are doing and do it right. Any attorney I know of would either file a motion for summary judgment immediately upon receipt of such a set of denials and answers as has been suggested or they would file a motion to deem admitted or both. In my personal opinion the legal aid attorney gave you very bad answers and no help at all. You need serious help to get the job done and it would seem obvious that you may not have the funds to hire an attorney to help you. Even if you did, the results will probably be about the same. The first thing you need to understand is that your chances of preventing a judgment in local courts are slim to none no matter how you go about it. There are ways to turn that probable loss into a win just as there are ways to keep them from getting any money after the judgment is granted. But even though you are probably going to lose in the local court there isn't any sense in making things any worse by following bad advice even if it was free. You need time and you can't get it unless you can come up with some good responses to the summons. What you need to do is call me at (405) 237-2174 and maybe I can give you some help but you are going to have to do the research I suggested in order to know how those responses must be formulated. You can't just up and tell fibs in response to their demands either. Denials aren't the only responses allowable either. You can object to some of the questions and maybe give answers to some of them that aren't fibs but may not be the whole truth either. Your responses should be tailored to each question, not just blanket denials. There may be side issues that can be brought into play to keep them from getting a judgment too.

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