Short story - Spouse and I were doing well and he got sick and closed his business, I retired on government annuity, we moved out of state to take care of elderly parents. We couldn't keep up with credit card debts on very small income.

Now we have 4 (yes four) pending suits filed by the same well known low life law firm for 3actions by JDB's Unifund and 1 by Midland. All summons say the OC assigned the debt.

I filed answers on 3 of them and am trying to work on discovery but have reached the end of my rope. We just received the 4th one today. What will the judge think when we have 4 complaints. What is our defense on so many - won't it look like we are deadbeats? We did default on the original credit cards and just can't pay them right now but object to the bottom feeding collectors rights.

DO I JUST NEED TO GIVE UP - and let them have default judgments?

Bankruptcy may be an answer, if you have no where to go.
Judges don't normally have opinoiins of you, they merely rule on the case law presented.

Not showing up = 0% chance of improving anything
Showing up = >0% chance

Is it a large amount owed on each, or more small claims level debt? I recently read about a lady showed up for court where she was one of 8 on the docket as defendants with Midland as the plaintiff. None of the other defendants were at court, and so Midland got 7 default judgments. However, Midland didn't have any representative at court either... so her case was dismissed because she was there. They won 7/8 suits without even being in the building... they may not even bother to send people in some jurisdictions and for smaller amounts.

Really, you can't be any worse off if you go to court.

The judge may order mediation right there at the courthouse, where you can see if you can work out payment terms you can live with. You can challenge the CA standing, if nothing else.

You may also wish to consider bankruptcy as Fr_Chuck suggests.