Never served, yet judgement was filed
I have a legal question.
I'm in New York. From 2002-2007 we rented a small townhouse, were always on time with the rent and had no cause for concern. We ended up finding a house in a better neighborhood that we could rent to own and we jumped at the change. We were told that we could not get out of our lease, since it was winter or something, but we did anyway and we moved (probably not the best decision, but we are all aloud bad ones once in a while right?)
Now, my husband was injured and we ended up losing that house and are now in a place where we are again renting to own, we also lost our business and all our savings when he was hurt.
Fast forward to present day, the people who own the house we live in now, friends of ours in North Carolina call us to say they were served with papers that they had to answer personal information about us because we were being sued.
We called the lawyer and have been up front about everything. We are being sued for about $6500 from our broken lease 3 years ago.
We have sent the lawyer a payment agreement, which is low, but we are going to pay the debt off completely in February 2010 due to a payout we get from an annuity my husband has. We have sent the lawyer our paystubs, returned calls and have been pleasant, even though he is a head to us.
My question... we were never served anything, never notified. We were told we were sent a letter 3 years ago, but have never seen the letter, or it may have been the time while my husband was hurt and we were losing everything. Do I have any rights here? Can I argue that now that this judgement has been filed without my prior knowledge, they have ruined our credit, which we were finally starting to get back on track?
I'm not denying the debt, I take full repsonsibility for it, I want to pay it back, but I'm kind of screwed here and a simple phone call could have avoided most of this. The lawyer said he doesn't call people anymore because people don't return his calls.
I'm sick about this, My husband and I have worked so hard to rebuild ourselves after his accident and now it's all gone, he could garnish our wages and we could be destitue.
Sorry this is so long, I just really need some advice.
Thanks in advance.
Marie
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