Categories
Many people are very surprised to learn, sometimes many years later, that they have been sued and that a money judgment has been entered against them in a court of law. The usual ways they find out about this is if a fault shows up on their credit record, or shows up on a title report when they’re trying to buy a new property or refinance a property they already own.
How can this happen without your knowledge? Although this scenario may vary in different courts and different geographic jurisdictions, as each state and local area has different rules, the usual situation is that someone has sued a person (or business entity) and then a process server files an affidavit Before the court. stating that said person or entity has been notified. If a person fails to appear in court, the court requires that valid notice has been given to a person or entity in the lawsuit before a court enters what is known as a default judgment against them. A default judgment may be known by a different name in different jurisdictions, but whatever its name is, it means that a judgment was entered because a person or entity failed to appear and defend the claim in court.
Depending on local court rules, service may be served on the person being sued, on any adult who answered the door, who is presumed to live there, or sometimes service is allowed simply by posting on the property. If personal service cannot be served, a court may be asked to allow other types of service involving first-class mail, certified mail, posting on the property, and sometimes posting notice. in a newspaper. Also, especially in landlord-tenant cases, if someone still has a registered address, but no longer lives on the property, service can be performed at the registered address even if the tenant has moved. Nor is it the responsibility of the court or process server to discover new addresses, use a forwarding address of which they are aware, or conduct a freedom of information search or other search with the post office or other entity.
Many people are surprised to learn that whoever opened their door to the process server did not deliver the complaint to the person being sued, or threw the complaint in a drawer, or destroyed the complaint, etc. A person’s spouse, partner, partner, child, or roommate may deliberately not send the complaint to the person being sued. It is also not uncommon for a company to have been sued and the person served either tossed the complaint in a drawer or failed to tell anyone in a timely manner. In addition, it is possible that the person also refused to accept the service, and the process service left the complaint at the door, and this is also sometimes considered good service. None of the above instances necessarily mean that a valid notice under the law was not made.
Also, in some cases, there are unscrupulous process servers who lie about doing the service in order to get paid, because sometimes they can’t collect a fee until a valid service is done, and sometimes they make up a description of who they are supposed to be. They served, when no one was served.
Many people get their second surprise when they learn that it is usually not a simple matter to expunge a judgment of which they are unaware from the personal record. A money judgment is not removed from a person’s record until the person or business that entered it marks it as satisfied. Therefore, a court will not reverse the judgment just because you ask it to. Whether this is a fair situation or not enters into the process. It is a situation that must be addressed formally and legally.
If you find out there is a judgment against you, get the court records as soon as possible. This may or may not be possible to do online depending on whether the court system publishes such records and how old the judgment is. Once you get the record, you have a couple of options. The first is that you can ask the court to open the judgment and you must give valid reasons for doing so, as supported by law. Usually this is not possible if a period of time has passed, because when you actually found out about the sentence, it is not the problem. When I say a period of time, even 3-6 months may be considered by the courts to be too long. The issue is when you should have found out about the judgment, if you had been diligently monitoring your credit reports, not when you actually found out. If your request is granted, the court will schedule another hearing. If your petition is denied, you can appeal to a higher court, but this petition will usually be upheld if a period of time has passed.
Your second option, and this may be your only option if the court denies your request, is to try to work out a payment plan or a lump sum payment with a deduction to pay the judgment with whoever has the judgment. This has to happen even if you think you don’t owe the bug if you want the bug to be marked as satisfied and removed from your record. Remember to make sure you get an agreement that the judgment will be marked satisfied if you pay it.
The second option can also be difficult if the person you owe money to has died, cannot be located if still alive, if it is a business, may no longer be in business, or sold the business, or changed of name, etc., or his lawyer is no longer practicing, etc., etc. You may have to pay to have them located. Depending on the jurisdiction, if a judgment has not been collected in many years, it may no longer be valid, but it may still appear on one’s record. Judgments may also be required to be revived, and may disappear from the credit report after a period of time and then reappear once revived.
THEREFORE, THE MORAL OF THIS ARTICLE IS TO ALWAYS BE VIGILANT IN MONITORING YOUR CREDIT AND REVIEW YOUR RECORDS, INCLUDING COURT RECORDS, WHICH USUALLY KEEP RECORDS BY NAME, TO SEE IF YOU HAVE BEEN SUED AND OWE A JUDGMENT. TOSOMEONE.
