FraudulentCharges.com

No difference if believe the news media about a declining US economy, one thing is for certain, debt collectors are filing suits to gather debts. One huge collection firm grounded out of Atlanta has indicated that they file approximately 279 collection lawsuits per day. A lawsuit is as usual the final effort in the creditor’s attempt to collect a debt. If the harassing and often illegal collection calls were not enough, once a person is sued the reality of the situation is realized. But, for the defendant, not all matter is lost. By the time the credit card organization or other creditor files the credit card lawsuit, it may really be too late to legally take back the debt, if it is properly secured. Often times with the help of an attorney a lawsuit to collect a debt may be defended, negotiated, or won out straight for the defendant. Before you begin feeling bad for the credit card organization, remember, they are the same organizarion that suggested an interest range of 6.9% and when you were one day late on a payment raised the interest scale to 24.9%.

Back to the defense of the suit:

First, “you need to answer lawsuit”. When a law suit is commenced, the name of the game for the debt collector is default judgment. A default judgment is the result of a lawsuit if the defendant fails to timely file a response. Default judgments are important for the collectors because it means they do not need to convince you owe the money, how much you should pay, and most importantly, and this is a secret, the agent for the credit card organization or other creditor does not need to come to court.

When a default judgment is entered, all of the probable defenses to the suit are lost, and no one has to go to court to prove the debt. Hence “always file an answer”. But, you need to be careful. In some jurisdictions nearly all of the defendant’s affirmative defenses should be filed at the time the original response is filed with the court or the defenses are wasted forever.

What type of credit card lawsuit defense are common in debt collection situations you ask? The most common are the statute of limitations, statute of frauds, improper plaintiff, improper defendant, invalid debt transfer, violation of bankruptcy discharge, and violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The last one is not indeed a defense, but it work like one. No doubt, most non-lawyers would have certain difficulty defining which if any of the defenses are available in a particular situation.