Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Virginia

Re: Threatened to be sued?

Based on my experience, your wife must either pay the debt, dispute it or make payment arrangements or she will be sued. Likely, the judgement will include legal fees, costs and interest. The creditor is then free to levy on bank accounts and garnish wages.

Your wife should immediately seek to consult with counsel, personally and not on the Internet, and I strongly suggest that it be with bankruptcy counsel -- someone who knows debtor's rights.

Re: Threatened to be sued?

Well, this is a very open-ended question. Most credit cards will have a fairly systematic approach to handling unpaid accounts, and so I would expect them to eventually attempt to sue, but I would also expect it to be slow and clumsy. The statute of limitations is 5 years on a written contract. Since you almost certainly signed something when getting the credit card, assuming they have not lost it (which happens) then the SoL would be 5, measured from the first missed payment. The SoL is 3 years from the last charge on the credit card or the last payment made, whichever is later.

In Virginia, one can sue beyond the SoL, but as soon as you object and raise the SoL as a defense, the lawsuit is dead. So it would not stop them from suing, but it would stop them from winning.

When they eventually sue, assuming they don't wait past the SoL, at that point, many credit card companies will never send a witness, and will lose at trial by default.