Help! How soon can I get sued?

[tofu4you2]

If I haven't paid on my cc's in 6 months how soon may I get sued by my creditors? I have $90k in cc debt. I am waiting on my tenant to buy my house. I don't know if I can wait it out or not. I am not sure what to do. Most of my cc's have gone to charge offs. Help. Need advice. Thanks.

[keepmine]

Nobody can tell you with any certainty when or if you'll get sued.
Some are sued early and other go years without a suit. Just the luck of the draw.

[ssdsco]

If I haven't paid on my cc's in 6 months how soon may I get sued by my creditors? I have $90k in cc debt. I am waiting on my tenant to buy my house. I don't know if I can wait it out or not. I am not sure what to do. Most of my cc's have gone to charge offs. Help. Need advice. Thanks.

What's your specific concerns ? You'll have several months notice of any legal action as long as your creditors have your current address.

[DivorceRuinedMe]

Keepmine is right - it's on a case by case basis. I was sued at around the 6 month mark and luckily was ready and waiting for that suit to file. If I were you, I'd get my ducks in a row just in case you get served.

[Rover]

If the bank that issued the credit card sues, it takes about six months before a lawsuit is filed. If the bank sells the debt to a debt collector, it can take as much as two years or longer. Citibank generally sues after six months. MBNA not at all. B of A sells to debt collectors who then may or may not sue.

[Lindsay]

Chase sued me twice on two different accounts. The first lawsuit was filed in Oct after less than 4 months delinquency. The second lawsuit was filed in January after 6 month delinquency. I answered both summons and haven't received any court dates yet. We are filing bankruptcy real soon!

[unsecured]

Good question, I guess it is luck of the draw....I had a personal loan with MBNA that went to BofA so I wonder if that will go to an agency? What about AmEx?

[debtmonster]

Citibank

I racked up a Citibank card to $1500. I never got sued. How much do you have to rack up before they sue you?

What happens if you get the summons, you go to court, they win, and you don't have any money to pay them? What do you do? Over the past several years, all we do is ignore everybody. When the letters come in, I've replied back letting them know we're broke. They can never reach me by phone because I have either moved for different jobs around the country or change phone numbers like 20 to 30 times in the past 10 years.

Me and my wife are both unemployed. We owe TONS of people money now. We have way over $100k in debts now. With our mortgage, that would be $240k+ in debt.

I always read about law suits and stuff, but I haven't stumbled upon a post yet where somebody lost in court and didn't have money and didn't file bankruptcy. We don't want to file bankruptcy because we bought $5,000 in leather sofa's (for my severe allergies) and a dining room table from Rooms to Go back before both of us lost our jobs. The first payment came in last month and now we're on payment #2. 0% for 5 years as long as you don't have any late payments. We don't want it to look like fraud as we have every intention in paying. We have nothing left in savings and have no assets with any real equity. Our cars are all upside down. I just had a GMAC repo this week. I really didn't want to burn GMAC as they have always given me 3.9 to 5.9% interest loans. Now I don't see how we will ever be able to get another car loan again without paying 20% interest on a 100k mile junker.

We don't have $3k-5k to buy a reliable used car for cash. And if we did file bankruptcy, you're not allowed to have that kind of money anyway. We live very far. In one year we racked up 100k miles on our 3 cars just going back and forth to work and going to the grocery stores.

Do you think GMAC will sue me for the repo since it's a 2007 car with almost 36,000 miles? We paid on it perfectly for just over a year never missing a payment and never being late. The mileage depreicates the car dramatically. We owed $25k on it as the pay off and I think KBB.com reports it being worth maybe $11-13k.

[Bandit]

I racked up a Citibank card to $1500. I never got sued. How much do you have to rack up before they sue you?

Is that 15 hundred or 15 thousand?

I don't know, but there is no rhyme or reason to some of this. Some people get it for 2K & others get nothing for 10K. I wonder if it has a lot to do with who is in charge of the account rather than any set policy? Kind of like, what mood they are in on what day and who they zone in on and decide to take it out on.

[debtmonster]

Is that 15 hundred or 15 thousand?

I don't know, but there is no rhyme or reason to some of this. Some people get it for 2K & others get nothing for 10K. I wonder if it has a lot to do with who is in charge of the account rather than any set policy? Kind of like, what mood they are in on what day and who they zone in on and decide to take it out on.

HA!

No, only $1,500. I don't have any credit cards maxed out over $3,000 that I can remember. The biggest and baddest have been the repo's since the cars are sometimes worth $10,000 less than what I owe once they auction them off.

I sort of look at it this way, "Bank, you're an idiot for giving away the car for next to nothing when you could have gotten thousands more for it by selling it it on a lot for more than giving it away for next to nothing."

[AboutToBK13]

It really depends on the CC I agree. We are 117K in debt and most cards are over the limit for small claims in PA. Meaning, they have to sue us in state court. We haven't paid on our CC in over a year. Most charged off in October.

We are in an odd position. In PA, you can't garnish wages and we have no real equity in our house. The worst that could happen is a lien on our home if we were sued. If someone went after are checking account, we could just go cash. I have often thought about riding it out until the SOL is up but I really want to close this part of our life ASAP.

We are filing BK 13 at the end of this month but I doubt we would be sued in the near term if we did not.

[debtmonster]

What kind of assets do you have that would cause you to not want to do a CH 7?

I wish they had something mixed between a CH 7 and a CH 13 not one extreme to the other.

According to www.zillow.com our house looks like it's worth a lot, but if we put it on the market, it would sit here probably for 5 years. So equity is all in the eye of the beholder. We bought our house brand new in 2005 for $120,000. The builder who made it built 3 other houses around the block and up the street. They've been for sale for a year and a half and nobody has bought any of them. They are also nicer than our house. If those houses can't sell, ours certainly never will. A friend of mine told me, "You got that house so cheap compared to all of the other houses in the state, I would keep it forever and retire it in later and go buy another one some place else." We lived in South Florida and were renting a house that was built in the 1950's. It's an old piece of crap and is worth $400,000. That's insane.

[danaf]

are you going to make any money if your tenants buy your house? just curious -

[debtmonster]

hi

An Italian guy owns it. We were renting it from him for $1300/mo. It's an old piece of crap. I was actually living in a spare bedroom. My wife's parents were the primary renters. The MLM I was in was starting back then started to grow. Once the MLM hit $1000/mo, that's when I thought we could move to the middle of the state where homes were cheaper and I could get a low paying job. Between the low paying job and the $1000/mo., I thought we could survive okay. I ended up getting a $40k job but had to drive 200 miles per day to get it. I found another job that would let me work from home for $45/hr. I quit that job to work from home. The person who hired me told me that there would be tons of work and that I would eventually have to move and work in the office. I was okay with that. Then it fizzled. The old job I was at found a replacement and the new company left me hanging out to dry. So now we've had to fall back on the MLM income. Instead of putting away 1/3rd of the income to cover taxes, we've been trying to do the right thing and pay off the mortgage, electric, property taxes, car payments, car insurance, food, Internet, mastercard, visa, Amex and lots of department store cards. Most of these got maxed out at the end of 2007 as we throught things were going great and they would easily get paid off. Then January 2008 came and everything took a nose dive. The recession kicked into 2nd gear and now my MLM is starting to sputter. I signed up 200 people in my downline and even with all of those people, I'm making the same or less than I did when I had 100 people. People simply don't have the money to buy stuff.

[CindyLou]

I didn't pay for 3+ years and didn't get sued on $80,000+....on the other hand my brother got sued by discover after 9 months for $1500 (I owed discover $6000 and barely got calls from them)...there is no rhyme or reason!!!!