You are here:

Collections Law/midland credit hassles

Advertisement

Expert: Creditwrench - 7/9/2009


Question
Some papers were seved at my house by a legal company, and the person that presented the papers didnt ask who he was handing the papers to and I get them 16 days later from my cousin who was house sitting at the time. this is a civil suit for collections that i have been working with the bank to pay back. NOW THIS IS GIVING ME A DATE TO APPEAR IN COURT. What can I do? I have called the collection agency and they gave me a lawyers office and when I called them I get no return phone call. What will happen if I dont go to court and what steps can I take to stop this. I was out of work for over a year and keeping my house was more important than worrying over a credit card with ridiculous finace charges. Please help with any advice.

Answer

click here to enlarge
The question I must ask is what do you want to do? You have some options at this point in time. Here are some of them. (1)Hire an attorney who may be able to work out a deal for you to pay less than they are currently asking. An attorney might be able to work out a settlement of around 75% to 85% of what they currently ask. If you have the cash to pay up you can probably avoid a judgment being granted against you. It is unlikely that an attorney can just make it all go away because they know they can easily get a judgment, garnish wages, seize bank accounts, vehicles or whatever else they can find to seize and sell at auction to get their money. If you don't have the cash to pay the settlement plus whatever the attorney wants then that option won't work for you. (2)Just ignore the whole situation, don't respond to the summons and let them get a judgment. Then the process I mentioned above will kick in and you start getting called in for an assets hearing and you will have to bring all your books and records to court and turn them over to the plaintiff's attorney so he can see what you have that may be garnished or seized to satisfy the debt. (3)Learn how to respond to the summons and complaint without hiring a lawyer, learn how to catch the plaintiff's lawyer violating the law and take him to federal court and make him forget about ever collecting a crying dime, pay you for your court costs, pay you for your time preparing your case, pay you damages on top of that. It really isn't hard to do. Make them pay you and go away and leave you alone. So you tell me what you want to do. If you choose option #3 just click on the image link and let's go from there.  

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.

©2012 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.