Summons Served

[firefly1172]

I was served a summons today that was left with my 18 yo daughter. There was also a summons for my husband, but he does not live here any longer - he lives in another state. I am trying to figure out what to do. We have been trying so hard to straighten out our credit and now I am afraid that we will never be able to fix things. Here is the situation:

1. Who is suing you? Professional Recovery

2. For how much? Me - $1668.15, My husband - $1047.85

3. Who is the original creditor? - Dental Bill - The bill is for $988.25 plus collection and attorney fee.

4. How do you know you are being sued? Summons was served to my daughter today.

5. How were you served? Were you served? Summons - in person, given to my daughter for both me and my husband although my husband does not live in Colorado

6. What was your correspondence (if any) with the people suing you before you think you were being sued? - Received collection notices. Originally, we were going to file for BK protection so sent a notice to CA to that nature. We received a follow-up letter from them stating that if we didn't pay they were going to sue (received after we sent the letter). I sent them a C&D. I received no more communication from them until now. We found that we were not eligible to file for BK after sending them the notice. The CA attached a notice to the summons stating that "if we would like to discuss the possibility of saving money by resolving this account we should contact them. The sooner that we contact them the more we could possibly save."

7. Where do you live? Colorado. Husband SC.

8. When is the last time you paid on this account? 1 year ago

9. What is the status of your case (if anything has been opened)? You can find this by a) calling the court or looking it up online (many states have this information posted daily). The courts are closed. I will call tomorrow.

10. Have you disputed the debt with the credit bureaus (both the original creditor and the collection agency?) No, we haven't.

11. Did you request debt validation before the suit was filed? If not, don't bother doing this now. No, we didn't

12. Does your summons require a response? (Look hard!) If you don't get a questionnaire with your summons, you are still probably required to answer it in writing. If you don't respond to the lawsuit notice you will lose automatically. In 99% of the cases, they will require you to answer the summons, and each point they are claiming. We need to know what the "charges" are. Please post what they are claiming. Did you receive an interrogatory (questionnaire) regarding the lawsuit? We received a questionnaire attached to the summons.

13. What evidence did they send with the summons? An affidavit? A statement from the OC? Anything else they attached as exhibits? There was nothing attached except for the CA's complaint.

14. What is the SOL on the debt? To find out: I think that it is 6 years.

Any advice? We are in the process of building a house and I am afraid that this will prevent us from getting our loan.

[Fozzle]

Contact the opposing cousel and arrange a settlement and payment schedule. An overdue dental bill does not look as bad on your credit report as a judgment would. And, if the question comes up during ou loan process, you would be able to show that you've reached a settlement with the creditor and are attempting to "do the right thing".

[admin]

Any chance you can settle? It's not a lot of money. You could settle for half, especially if they have a weak case.

They don't have any documents from the dentist office attached? Any kind of sale or assignment documents from the dental office to the CA suing you?

That sounds like a weak case to me.

In any case, even if you decide to settle, file an answer. There are examples in the stickies above.