Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in California

Service by mail is not proper, unless the plaintiff claimed that they substituted personal service on a person older than age 18 at your home or business, then they mailed it to you after that. You have 30 days from the date that you are personally served or substitute served to file your answer in the court. You may want to consider bankruptcy, or just let them get a judgment, but then it will hurt your credit, and they can attach your pay wages or your bank accounts.

If they mailed it to you, it should have had a document with it captioned "Notice and Acknowledgement of Receipt." You have 20 days from the date of mailing to sign and return that. You then have 30 days after you sign and return it to file an answer. If no Notice and Acknowledgement of Receipt was enclosed, you should call the attorney named at the top left corner of the complaint and ask whether they intend to properly serve you, since just mailing a copy of a summons is legally meaningless. You should also realize, however, that if you do not have a defense to the debt, your situation is only going to get worse if you don't either figure out some way to pay it, or file for bankruptcy. If you think you can't afford their payment demands now, just wait until they garnish your paychecks for up to 1/2 your take-home pay, or start pulling money out of any checking and savings accounts they can find. That is what will eventually happen if they get a judgment against you.

Joe and Timothy are correct on the service issue. We have seen a uptick in "sewer service" where the process server claims to have made three attempts at service and then purpots to have left the complaint with someone in charge. Thereafter, they mail the summons and complaint to the person being served. As substituted service it is deemed complete on the 10th day after mailing. In other words you may have forty days from the date on the post mark to answer the Complaint.

If you can, check the court file (some counties allow you to do this on line) and see if the proof of service has been filed. If so see what the date of service is listed as. That will tell you more.

There are attorneys that will, for a fee, teach you how to represent yourself in these debt collection cases. One thing is to never admit the debt is yours. Always make them prove that the debt is in the correct amount. Often times they can not since the debt had been sold to a debt collector and they do not have the proper paperwork to prove their case. If they do have you can always work out the same settlement you could have had today.

I urge you to talk to an attorney how knows this area of law. It could be worth the couple of hundred dollars that you spend.

Good Luck