Midland Credit Management: They sued me. What do I do?
The short answer
File a written answer with the court before your deadline. That one act is what keeps the case alive. Everything else can wait a few days. That cannot.
Then, in order: read the papers and find the deadline, do not call them yet, file the answer, and make them prove the account is yours and theirs.
Why the answer matters more than anything else you could do
Midland is a debt buyer. It bought your account in a batch from whoever you originally borrowed from, and it now has to prove two separate things: that the debt is real, and that it is entitled to collect it.
If you do not file an answer, it never has to prove either one.
What happens instead is a default judgment. Midland asks the court to rule in its favour because you did not respond, and the court does, without examining the amount, the paperwork, or whether the account was ever yours. A judgment is not a letter. It is enforceable, and depending on your state it can lead to wage garnishment or a bank levy.
So the case is usually decided by whether you filed a document, not by who was right.
The first three days
- Write the date you were handed the papers on the envelope. Your deadline counts from that date, and it is the first thing you will be asked.
- Read every page. Find the plaintiff's name, the amount claimed, the case number, the county and the court. Note whether it is small claims or the regular civil docket, because the two work differently.
- Count the deadline on a calendar and write it somewhere you will see it. How long you have varies by state and by which docket you are on. It is commonly somewhere between 14 and 30 days from service. In Oklahoma it is 20 days on the civil docket.
- Call the court clerk and confirm it. Confirm the case number, the deadline and the courtroom. Clerks answer this question all day and they are the authority on their own docket.
- Pull your own credit reports and find the account. Note the original creditor, the last payment date and the balance you remember. Those three facts drive most of what comes next.
- Gather what you have. Statements, collection letters, proof of payments, the card agreement if you kept it.
What not to do, and why each one costs people the case
- Do not ignore the papers. This is the one that loses.
- Do not call Midland or its lawyer to work it out before you have responded. Anything you say can be written down and used. Respond first, talk after.
- Do not admit the debt before you have seen proof. Saying you suppose you owe it, on the record, effectively ends the argument.
- Do not make a small payment to make it go away. A payment can restart the clock on how long they have to sue, and can be treated as acknowledging the whole balance.
- Do not sign anything at the courthouse without reading it. A consent or agreed judgment is a judgment against you with your signature on it.
- Do not give a collector your bank account or employer details. Those are the two things a judgment creditor needs in order to collect.
What you are entitled to ask for
A lawsuit is a claim, not a fact. Four things have to be established, and you have the right to make them establish each one.
| What they must show | What to ask for |
|---|---|
| That you are the right person | The account number and the identifying details they matched you on |
| That they own the account | The chain of ownership from the original bank to Midland, every step |
| That the amount is right | The statements showing how they reached the figure on the petition |
| That the claim is not too old | The date of the last payment, measured against your state's limitation period |
The second row is where debt buyer cases are often weakest. Accounts are bought in bulk, frequently from a spreadsheet, and the buyer may never receive the underlying records for any individual account. Asking for the chain of ownership and the signed agreement is asking for documents that may not exist in usable form.
You do not have to prove that you do not owe the money. You have to make them prove that you do.
About Midland specifically
Midland Credit Management is a subsidiary of Encore Capital Group, a publicly traded company, and one of the largest debt buyers in the country. It is a real company, and it files a very large number of collection lawsuits.
It is also a company whose parent has been subject to federal enforcement action. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau entered a consent order against Encore and its subsidiaries in September 2015, sued again in September 2020 alleging parts of that order had not been followed, and settled in October 2020 with a stipulated judgment including a $15 million civil penalty and continued obligations around collecting time-barred debt. Encore neither admitted nor denied the allegations.
Being a real company and being right about your particular account are two different questions. You are allowed to make them answer the second one.
Where free help exists
If you cannot afford a lawyer, look for a legal aid organisation in your state and ask about debt defense. Do it in the first week, not the week of the hearing, because the good ones have waiting lists.