Legal Question in Civil Litigation in North Carolina

First, clerks are not necessarily lawyers and do NOT give out legal advice. They are not going to tell you what the paper means. That is giving legal advice.

Second, if you do not know what the paper means, you should get a lawyer. The person suing you is called the plaintiff. The person who has been sued is called the defendant. The defendant has 30 days to answer a complaint. The 30 days runs from the date on which the defendant receives the complaint. Example you receive the complaint on June 1; then you generally have until July 1 to file your answer.

I don't know what you have been sued for. Is this a credit card debt or something else? There are no forms, but answers typically follow a format like the complaint. The complaint consists of numbered paragraphs. The beginning paragraphs identify the parties and then explain (maybe) how and why the court can hear the case, and then the facts on which the situation is based. It is followed by a request for relief. In the answer, the defendant admits the facts if they are true and denies them if the defendant disagrees. if the defendant does not know one way or the other, he denies and asks for proof at trial. If the defendant has any defenses (most commonly the statute of limitations, but there could be others depending on the particular facts of the casee which I do not know) they must be raised in the answer or else they are waived (meaning you cannot raise them later). If the defendant wants to assert any counterclaims, he also must raise those in the answer. The defendant then asks for relief. Other defenses have to be raised via preliminary objections (like if the court has no jurisdiction or you are challenging venue or service of the complaint).

If you do not understand these terms, I again urge you to see a lawyer ASAP.

On the offchance that this is for a credit card debt, you have to ask yourself if you have any defenses like the statute of limitations or identity theft or inability of the creditor to prove this is your debt. If none of these exist and this is your debt and there are absolutely no defenses, then don't bother filing an answer unless your goal is to delay. While litigation lawyers may feel differently, my thoughts on this are: if you do nothing, the creditor gets a judgment against you; if you answer, the creditor gets a judgment against you, but a little later. Same result in each case but in the latter, all you have done is make them spend more money. Most credit card agreements are written in such a way that you are responsible for their attorney fees so all you are doing is increasing the judgment by making them spend more. You also run the risk of irritating them to the point where they will not settle with you. Debts can always be settled for less than the full amount of the judgment and they can be settled at any time - before litigation, during litigation or after judgment is entered. The amount depends on the creditor, but most creditors will accept between 50% and 80% of the judgment balance.

Bottom line - if this is for something other than a credit card debt, then you need to get to a lawyer ASAP. If this is for a credit card debt AND you are interested in resolving the debt outside of court litigation, then feel free to contact me at [email protected] so that I can more specifically review your situation. However, I will not draft an answer for you regardless of your circumstances.