DEBT LAWSUIT BASICS
What Am I Facing? Work It Out in One Minute
Start here: what is actually in your hand?
People arrive at this terrified and not sure what they are looking at. The thing you are holding decides everything: how urgent it is, what you do first, and whether there is a deadline running right now.
Find yours below. Each one takes a minute.
The answer is the same whoever is suing you.
You are not the only one. Hundreds of thousands of these get filed every year, mostly against ordinary people who hit a bad stretch. Life gets messy. None of it makes you a bad person. It just makes you human.
They file these by the thousand. You are doing this once. That gap is the only real advantage they have, and it closes the moment you know what they have to prove. Learn it, use it, fight back strong.
1. A phone call, and nothing in writing
Urgency: low. Do not act on a phone call.
A call proves nothing. It does not start any clock, it does not require you to answer anything, and the person calling may be wrong about who you are.
What to do: say you want everything in writing, then stop talking. Do not confirm your address, your employer, your bank, or that the debt is yours. Ask for the company's name and address, and hang up.
You have no obligation to prove anything to a caller.
2. A letter from a company you have never heard of
Urgency: low, but a clock starts now. Thirty days.
This is the most common thing people are holding, and it is the one with the best odds, because you have a right that expires.
If you dispute the debt in writing within thirty days of their first written notice, the collector must stop collecting until it mails you verification. See 15 U.S.C. 1692g(b).
What to do: send the validation letter. It is free on this site, there is nothing to sign up for, and it costs a stamp. Do not pay anything before you see what comes back.
3. A letter that threatens to sue, or says "final notice"
Urgency: medium. Still not a lawsuit.
Threatening language is not a court case. A letter cannot take your wages, freeze an account, or put anything on your record.
What to do: exactly the same as number 2, and keep the letter. If the threat is of something they cannot legally do, or of action on a debt too old to sue on, that may itself be a violation worth showing a consumer attorney.
4. Papers with a case number, a court, and a county on them
Urgency: HIGH. A deadline is running right now.
This is a lawsuit, and it is the only situation on this page where waiting costs you something that cannot be recovered.
Deadlines vary by state and court. Commonly 14 to 30 days from the day you were served. Texas justice court is the end of the 14th day. Oklahoma civil docket is 20 days.
What to do today:
- Write the date you were served on the envelope
- Find the case number, court and county
- Call that court's clerk and confirm your deadline. They answer this all day and they are the authority
- File a written answer before it. In most courts filing an answer costs nothing
Do not call the other side before you have filed. Everything else on this site about answering a lawsuit is free to read.
5. Something on your credit report you do not recognise
Urgency: low. No deadline, but it is costing you.
A collection entry you do not recognise is extremely common, and it is often wrong: a mixed file, an old address matched to the wrong person, or the same debt reported twice after it was sold.
What to do: pull all three reports, which are free. Check the original creditor, the balance, the date of first delinquency, and whether it appears twice. Then dispute both with the bureaus and with the collector, which are two separate actions under two different laws. Most people do one.
6. Money already missing from your pay or your account
Urgency: HIGH, and the window is short.
This means a judgment already exists, and something was filed before this happened.
What to do today: look for the paperwork that came with it. There is usually a notice of exemptions and a form to claim them, and the deadline to file that claim can be as short as five days. Call legal aid in your state the same day.
Exemptions are real and generous in some states. Texas does not allow wage garnishment for consumer debt at all. Oklahoma exempts seventy-five percent of recent wages. But somebody has to claim them, and that somebody is you.
7. You are not sure, or it is more than one of these
Urgency: treat it as number 4 until you have ruled it out.
The single question that settles it: is there a case number, a court and a county on the paperwork?
If yes, you are in number 4 and a deadline is running. If no, you have time to verify first, and verifying first is the right order.
The two mistakes that cost the most
Ignoring real court papers. This is how most of these cases end. The court enters a default judgment and stops asking whether you owe it, whether the amount is right, or whether the company suing can prove it owns the account.
Paying or promising to pay before you have verified. On a debt that is not yours this is very hard to undo, and on an old debt a payment can restart the clock on how long they have to sue you in most states.