CREDITOR-SPECIFIC DEFENSE GUIDE
LVNV Funding: Do they need the original credit card contract?
Here is exactly what to do right now.
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.
The short answer
They need to prove the terms they are suing under, and for this plaintiff there is a second question behind it: who is producing the document, and how do they know what it is?
The ordinary question first
LVNV is suing over an account with terms: a rate, a fee schedule, a default rate. Those terms are what turn money borrowed into the figure on the petition. Without the agreement, the extra is unexplained.
Most credit cards are not opened by signing a paper contract. They are opened by application and governed by a cardholder agreement the bank can amend. So "they do not have my signature" is weaker than it feels. What matters is whether they can produce the agreement governing your account during the period claimed, and tie it to your account number.
The part specific to this plaintiff
LVNV Funding is the owner and the named plaintiff. Resurgent Capital Services is the servicer that holds and produces records.
That means the agreement, if it arrives, typically comes to you through an entity that did not create it and did not receive it from the bank directly, having passed through one or more portfolio sales first.
So there are two fair questions rather than one:
- Is this the agreement that actually governed my account, during the period being sued over?
- Who is attesting to that, in what role, and on what basis do they know?
Business records generally have to be established by someone familiar with how they were made and kept. A servicer employee describing a bank's document about an account they never saw opened is a reasonable thing to ask about.
What to request, specifically
| Ask for | Why it matters here |
|---|---|
| The cardholder agreement in force during the period claimed | Not a current specimen off the bank's website |
| Any change-in-terms notices relied on | The rate and fees being claimed have to come from somewhere |
| Statements covering the period | How the balance was built, not one final number |
| Whatever ties that agreement to your account number | A blank template is not an answer |
| The identity and role of the person attesting | Whether someone with knowledge stands behind it |
Why a debt buyer often struggles with this
When a bank charges off and sells an account, what usually transfers is a data file: names, addresses, account numbers, balances. The underlying documents frequently stay with the bank, and the sale agreement may provide no documents and warrant nothing about accuracy.
Sometimes documents can be ordered back from the seller. Sometimes they cannot. Asking is how you find out which situation your case is in, and the answer shapes everything after it.
What this does not mean
Courts differ on what they require. Some plaintiffs produce everything, and an affidavit from the original creditor carries real weight in many courtrooms. A missing document does not win a case by itself.
It means there is a real question here, it belongs to you, and it is never asked in a case where nobody filed a response.