When will the creditors sue me?

[river147]

Need some advice. I am currently about 2-3 months behind on payments. Right now, I'm just getting annoying reminder calls. Won't file chapter 7 till the fall about sept or october, thats about another 4 months away. By that time I will have been 6-7 months late on cc pymts. . I have all the big guns (chase, citi, discover, am.exp). At what point will I be turned over to collections and when will they start to serve me a summons? I'm trying to buy some time, waiting to hear about final approval on loan modification before I file bk. Will retain attorney next week. What should I do?

[blockhead]

I got sued after 6 mths on a couple of large balances (25K plus) by Amex and Citi.
Whether they sue is a complete mystery at least to me, although large balances are probably part of it. Given your timeframe for filing you can probably hold them off. You can file an answer to any lawsuit which will buy time. Your attorney will have more ideas I am sure.

[AlmostAmos]

We have about $90k of CC debt, w/ all of the big guns (BOA, Citi, Chase, Barclays, etc.). We had two cards that had balances of $25k & $22k. The rest were around $6-10k/ea. We paid the December 2009 payments & that was it. We never talked w/ them or anything - just deleted their voicemails. We're filing next week and haven't heard ANYTHING regarding a lawsuit.

ETA: I know one thing that will make them come after you is if they know you are working... If you tell them your broke/out of work/etc., you may buy some time.

[Susan]

I stopped paying all credit cards May 2009.
Discover was the first to sue. They put a summons on my door last week.
I'm guessing the others won't be too far behind.

[daytona]

River- you will be fine. Once it goes to collections, (6-7mo typically) you will get a notice that they are attempting to collect a debt yada, yada.. Send a DV to them, which should buy you 1-2mo+. Some will respond, others will assign the account to yet another collector, if so repeat the DV exercise. (I have a very good letter)

Eventually they will sue, (and in many cases violate FDCPA) which gives you 15-30 days to respond to suit, you can then respond and ask for all sorts of discovery...this can eat 2-6mo up. Eventually there will be a status conference (where the judge will want to know if things can be settled, intentions, etc. before you actually have to go courtroom to get a judgement racked up against you. At any point (even post judgement) you can BK the debt and if it got to the status conference stage you could let the creditor know that you just "nuked" their case.

[blockhead]

Yes, pour a giant can of whoop-ass all over their case, as someone put it!

[epiphany]

There is no rhyme or reason as to who gets sued when by any given creditor. If you read stories on this board you will see that experiences vary greatly. The same creditor or CA that does not sue you for 50K might sue me for 1500.

That being said, it is unlikely that any of them would begin proceedings until there has been at least a six month deliquency and after that it takes about 4 months to get a judgment. With your filing timeline you should be okay.

Should one begin to sue you before you actually get filed, have your lawyer call them. Or call them yourself and give them your lawyer's name and number. When they find out you are filing, they may just abandon the suit.

ep

[JackBondLove]

I'm not sure how long the creditors were taking for me, as all I had was a PO Box, and my official legal address was an empty homesite - which was legal for me to do as my previous home was destroyed in a natural disaster. And the Justice of Peace for my homesite said that I could not be taken to court without a personal summons. I suppose I could have gone on indefinitely like that, but I did have a big pile of cash in a checking account that was used to buy my current home on the eve of filing Chapter 7, and I didn't want any problems with that. I did have a bunch of registered (or certified?) letter notices when I got around to checking the PO Box, but by then, they had all expired.

[nceguyfromne]

AMEX was by far my biggest creditor dollar-wise and was the first and only creditor to sick their "attorneys" on me. I started getting calls around the 75-90 day mark and they sent me one letter requesting that I pay the overdue amount within about 3 weeks to "demonstrate (my) willingness to cooperate," while reminding me that they were within their rights to collect the entire balance. I filed BK about a month later and that was as far as things ever went. Had I not known I would be filing soon anyway, I probably would have waited close to my 30 day dispute date and then sent them a dispute letter to buy some more time. You can use the same tactic again when and if they file a summons. My guess is you can easily delay them long enough to get your BK filed prior to a judgment but even if you can't, you should be able to get your BK filed before they're able to collect anything on it.