Old Debt Coming Back to Bite Me

So you get a summons in the mail, you are being sued. An old debt has come back to haunt you. You are a little anxious, not knowing what to expect. Should you get an attorney or should you try to handle it on your own. Handling it on your own can be an enlightening experience. I have had this happen twice to me, one case is still in the works, so I would like to talk about the one that is completed.

I come home from work one day and in the mail was a certified/registered letter from the local magistrate's office. I was being sued by for an old credit card that I had some years ago. The statute of limitations was about to run out, so they were digging their claws into my wallet before their time ran out.

I had tried to negotiate a manageable payment arrangement with this card in the past and was unsuccessful. The payments they wanted, in the amount of time they wanted it was not affordable to me at the time. The funny thing is, since they sued me they were a lot more cooperative.

The law firm negotiated a settlement amount lower than the original request and in payments that I could afford. We never went to court, they kept filing for a continuance until the last payment was made. I just got a letter in the mail from the magistrates office yesterday that stated the case was dismissed without prejudice.

Some myths I got to debunk during this process:

The plaintiff won't show up and you will win the case.

Probably true, they won't show up and you will "temporarily" win, they will appeal it to a higher court, where they will show up and fight you over this.

The collection agency will not work with you at this point.

Not true, this is when they were the most cooperative to me, I got affordable payment arrangements out of them and paid the bill off.

My credit report already reflects this bill as delinquent, so paying won't make things

Any better.

Not true, yes the delinquency will still be there, but it will showed settled out and paid. It is much easier to explain to a future creditor that you did pay it off rather than trying to explain why you didn't.

Just because you haven't heard from the old debt in a while you should not take for granted that it has disappeared. You need to know your states statute of limitations on debt and what the laws are on collecting it. In my case the statute of limitations is four years in Pennsylvania and as long as they have filed suit with in that time frame, the lawsuit can be pursued. It puts a freeze on the statute of limitations. Most of the time it is better to try and work things out with the original creditor, if that is not possible some collection agencies will work with you. At least that has been my experience. I have one more that is giving me a real hard time but this too shall pass, eventually. I will write an article on it when the time comes.