Tag Archives: lawsuits

There’s a Judgment Against Me – What Are My Options?

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Many people face civil judgments for debt collection. Here’s a guide to your options for addressing this problem.

What is a Debt-Collection Judgment?

A debt-collection judgment is basically a court order signed by a judge stating that you owe the plaintiff, who may be the original creditor or a debt collector, a specific sum of money. The judgment may or may not say that you owe continuing interest and/or attorney fees to the plaintiff.

How Do I Know if There’s a Judgment Against Me?

Typically, you would have been served with legal papers – a lawsuit – at some point. You may or may not have chosen to handle the lawsuit somehow, either by contacting the other side’s attorneys yourself or by getting your own attorney. Or maybe you ignored it. If a judgment was entered, you should have received a copy of the judgment itself or some notification that a judgment was entered against you, along with some indication of how much money the judgment was for.

If you were not served with any legal papers, it’s possible that you might have missed them in the mail somehow – some courts allow for service by mail, under certain circumstances – or maybe you’ve moved over the last few years. Try looking on the court’s website to see if you can locate a lawsuit against you. If you find one, make a note of the county in which it was filed, the plaintiff’s name, and the court’s docket number. These pieces of information will come in handy if you need to call an attorney or the court clerk.

If you knew about the lawsuit early on and you settled it with the plaintiff’s law firm, you might be required to make payments on the debt over time. In that case, there should not be a judgment against you, at least not if the debt-collection lawsuit took place in New Jersey. A debt-collection settlement is not the same as a debt-collection judgment in the New Jersey civil court system.

There’s a Judgment Against Me – What Are the Risks?

If there is a debt-collection judgment against you in New Jersey, you face some potential problems. The most likely issues are the following:

  • Wage garnishment: Only a certain percentage of your wages can be garnished, but it might be more than you can afford;
  • Bank levy: This is the most dangerous, in my opinion, because the plaintiff can get up to the full amount of the judgment at one time – meaning that your bank account could be cleared out; and/or
  • Lien on real estate: If you own property in New Jersey, the plaintiff could have a lien placed on it, which means that, when you sell the property, the plaintiff will have to be paid from the sale proceeds.

I Can’t Afford to Pay the Judgment (Or the Settlement) – What Now?

If there is a debt-collection judgment against you and you can’t afford to pay it, you have a few options:

  • Do nothing: Let it get paid through one of the judgment collection methods listed above;
  • Settle it: You can settle a judgment, although it’s not likely to be on great terms – try settling it yourself, or if it’s for a high dollar amount, you might want to pay an attorney to settle it for you;
  • File for bankruptcy: Get a free bankruptcy consultation and tell the attorney as many details about the judgment as possible. Most debt-collection judgments are dischargeable in bankruptcy. Provide information about all of your debts, income, and assets with the bankruptcy attorney and see if you qualify.

If you’d like to discuss your debt situation, book a phone consultation now by scheduling it on my calendar.

When to consult a student loan lawyer

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Sometimes it’s obvious when you need to see a lawyer who practices student loan law:  When you are being sued, when your wages are being garnished, when some form of collection activity is being threatened or has already been instituted. But “an ounce of  prevention is worth a pound of cure,” as the saying, attributed to Benjamin Franklin, goes. Franklin’s advice on firefighting is equally applicable to debt payments, especially student loans, since student loans are usually not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

When you find yourself in a situation where you are no longer able to regularly and reliably make your student loan payments on time, it’s probably time to find a student loan lawyer.  Someone who practices in the area of student loan debt can help explore and explain your options to you.

Exploring your options with student loans necessarily begins with finding out exactly what type of student loan you are dealing with.  Many people are unaware of exactly the kind of loans they have, or they think they know but they may be mistaken.  Also, some people have different kinds of loans – private, Federal, state – making it difficult to sort out what is going on with all of them.

Honestly, whether anything at all can be done to make your student loan payments more affordable depends almost entirely on the type of loan you have.  So when a lawyer asks you what type of loan you have and you are unsure, please  understand that the answer to this question is of utmost importance and that your lawyer will likely do whatever it takes to find out this information.  Surprisingly, it may take a bit of research and digging to discover the origin of your particular student loans, so unless you are absolutely certain about what type of student loan you have, your attorney may have to spend some time finding out.

In short – seek out legal help, be willing to explore your options, have patience.  Feel free to call me about your student loan problems if you are in New Jersey, at (201) 676-0722.

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Could you sue? List it in your bankruptcy papers.

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Yet another question that I always ask clients is whether they have any claims against anyone that they could file in court. In other words, I ask whether or not they have any potential lawsuits against anyone.

Of course, I do need to know about actual, ongoing lawsuits, but in this post I’m talking about claims the debtor might have against another individual or against a company.

Why would I want to know about possible lawsuits you might have against others that you never filed in court? Because they are assets. They are assets because, if filed, they might bring in some money to you.

Now, it’s true that court fees, attorney’s fees and expert witness fees might eat up a lot (or maybe even all) of a recovery you might get in a lawsuit, depending on how much in damages you stand to recover. But a danger of not telling the bankruptcy court about your potential lawsuits is that you might no longer have the right to sue after the bankruptcy is over.

This is because a person who is filing for bankruptcy has an obligation under the law to disclose all of his or her assets or potential assets to the bankruptcy court. When you fail to disclose a potential lawsuit to the bankruptcy court but then you later (after the bankruptcy discharge) file that lawsuit, you have taken an inconsistent position – you’ve sworn to a bankruptcy court that you had no assets other than those you disclosed, and those assets didn’t include a potential lawsuit; and yet, you then filed a lawsuit after the bankruptcy based on a pre-bankruptcy claim. The law basically says that you cannot have it both ways.

When you file for bankruptcy, a bankruptcy estate is created. All of your assets, including potential lawsuits, become property of the bankruptcy estate, except for those assets you have managed to exempt. If you do not specifically list and exempt an asset, it is property of the bankruptcy estate. The rule of thumb is that it is always a better idea to list it and exempt it than not to list it at all.