Over the next several articles I'll be covering judgments and how they affect your credit and your ability to obtain a home mortgage loan.
What is a judgment? What is a default judgment? To answer these questions we have to start with how two parties get to this point.
When two parties disagree on a debt, the creditor goes through the court system and files a complaint.
This complaint is the notice to the court there is a disagreement.
The complaint includes the reason for the creditor's actions to seek court adjudication (award them the money).
At this point the entire scenario has become a lawsuit.
Now comes the awful part of this whole mess.
Here comes the sheriff's car up the street, or worse yet some seedy looking character right out of a bad detective novel.
These people are trying to serve you a summons.
They don't care if they serve it to you at home or work.
Do not try to hide as it will only do more harm.
There can be a brigh side as now is your chance to go to the courts and tell your side of the story.
What has happened to bring on this summons? The court examined the documents and proceeded to order a process server to give you a copy of the lawsuit.
Because most of us are deathly afraid of what is in the lawsuit, we don't want to read it.
Remember how we got to this point? We failed to respond to all those nasty phone calls and letters.
If we had embarked on an aggressive "debt negotiation" from the beginning we most likely would have never reached the judgment stage.
In my next article I'll go over what to do now the papers have been served.