Me and my spouse have a judgement against us. We were sent papers back in May 2006 from the courts system. There was no where on those papers where it said we needed to appear in court. All it said was to answer the courts. I never sent anything in. 2 months later we received papers that the company had been awarded a judgement against us. We are not intelligent with what deals with the law. but should we not have been given an opportunity to actually show up and defend ourselves?

Can we hire an attorney to vacate the judgement to defend ourselves?

Please advise

mr.yet

Your original papers should have had t o date of the hearing on it. Did you missing the hearing date?

aramirez1975

No they did not have a court date. I looked over those papers backwards and forwards. The only thing they said was we had "30" days from the date we were served to send in a written response.

ScottGem

If you didn't understand the papers you should have asked then. I'm sure those papers required that you take some action in respect to a court date. To "answer" a summons means to appear at the court.


So you had those 30 days and you didn't respond. Did you think not responding was going to make it go away? Since you didn't respond to the court, they had no choice to award judgement to the plaintiff.

Now, the question is what were you being sued for? Do you have a defense against it? If so, what? If you have a valid defense you will have to file a petititon in the court where the judgement was awarded to review or vacate the judgement. You probably want to get an attorney to help.

aramirez1975

I didn't even think about it at all since there was no court date listed. In order to be sued I should have been given an actual date to show up and defend myself. I was not.

mr.yet

You can file motion to vacate, for lack of notice, but dont know if it will help.

ScottGem

Not necessarily. Was the summons served in such a way as to provide proof of service? If so, you were given a chance to respond and declined to do so. The court could have taken that as declining to fight so entered the default judgement.

Fr_Chuck

You get the judgment vacated, they merely refile.

Also remember this motion will be in the court that ruled on it, so they would have reviewed the motions for the judgement and all the notification.
So you are going against it.

Next you would have to pay cash to an attorney to do this, which I would assume you don't have, to get a judgment lifted for a month or two, till they refile and get a new one in place.

If you really owe the money is it worth speedning what a lawyer charges and the court costs for a month or two