Many people are surprised to learn, sometimes many years later, that they have been sued and that a monetary judgment has been entered against them in a court of law. The usual way they find out about this is if a fault appears on your credit history or on a title report when they try 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, since each state and local area has different rules, the usual situation is that someone has sued a person (or a business entity) and then a process server files a declaration. sworn in court. which establishes that said person or entity has been notified. If a person does not appear in court, the court requires that valid notice has been made to a person or entity of the complaint 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 it is called, it means that a judgment was entered because a person or entity did not appear or defend the lawsuit in court.
Depending on local court rules, service can be made to the defendant, to any adult who opened the door, who is presumed to live there, or service is sometimes allowed just by posting on the property. If personal service cannot be made, a court may be asked to allow alternative types of service that involve sending service by first class mail, certified mail, posting on property, and sometimes publishing the service in a newspaper. Also, especially in the cases of landlords and tenants, if someone still has a registered address, but no longer lives in the property, the service can be performed at the registered address even if the tenant has moved. It is also not the responsibility of the court or the process server to discover new addresses, use a forwarding address they know, or conduct a free search for information or other search at 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 respondent, or threw the complaint in a drawer, or destroyed the complaint, etc. One’s spouse, partner, partner, child, or roommate may deliberately not refer the complaint to the respondent. It is also not unusual for a business to have been sued and the person served dropped the complaint in a drawer or not told anyone in a timely manner. In addition, the person may have also refused to accept the service, and the process service dropped the complaint at the door, and this is also sometimes considered good service. None of the above instances necessarily means that a valid notification has not been made according to the law.
Also, in some cases, there are unscrupulous process servers that lie about doing the service to get paid, because sometimes they cannot charge a fee until a valid service is performed and sometimes they make up a description of a who they supposedly served, when no one was served.
Many people get their second surprise when they learn that it is generally not a simple matter to remove such a lawsuit that they are not aware of from the personal record. A monetary judgment is not removed from a person’s record until the person or company that issued the judgment marks it as satisfied. Therefore, a court will not remove the sentence just because you ask it to. Whether this is a fair situation or not does not enter the process. It is a situation that must be addressed formally and legally.
If you learn of a judgment against you, get the court records as soon as possible. This may or may not be possible online, depending on whether the court system publishes such records and the age of the judgment. Once you get the record, you have a couple of options. The first is that you can ask the court to initiate 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 is not the problem. When I say period of time, the courts may consider too long even 3-6 months. The question is when you should have known about the judgment, if you had been diligently monitoring your credit reports, not when you actually did. If your request is granted, the court will schedule another hearing. If your request is denied, you can appeal to a higher court, but this request will generally stand if a period of time has passed.
Your second option, and this may be your only option if the court denies your petition, 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 feel you don’t owe the judgment if you want the judgment to be marked satisfied and removed from your record. Remember to make sure you receive an agreement that the judgment will be marked satisfied if you pay it.
The second option can also be difficult if the person to whom you owe money has passed away, cannot be located if they are still alive, if it is a business, they may no longer be in business, or that they sold the business, or you changed your name, etc., or your attorney is no longer in practice, etc., etc. You may have to pay to locate them. Depending on the jurisdiction, if a judgment has not been compiled in many years, it may no longer be valid, but it may still appear in one’s record. Lawsuits may also be required to be relived, and they may disappear from a person’s credit report after a period of time and then reappear once relived.
THEREFORE, THE MORALITY OF THIS ARTICLE IS ALWAYS VIGILANT IN THE MONITORING OF YOUR CREDIT AND REVIEW YOUR FILES, INCLUDING THE COURT FILES, WHICH GENERALLY KEEP THE RECORDS BY NAME, TO SEE IF YOU HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED AND OWE A JUDGMENT. .