Once you've been served with a lawsuit, usually through a court summons, you need to realize that the situation is serious and dangerous, but not hopeless. A lawsuit means you have entered a world with time deadlines that cannot be ignored or missed whether you know them or not, rules that govern what you file, how it can be filed and what a judge can see and hear and that those rules apply whether you know them or not, a language that is completely foreign to you but in which your opponent and the judge are perfectly fluent (legalese is not english) and face an outcome which could effect the direction and quality of your life for years to come. When I say that, I realize it may sound completely hopeless. It is not! You can defend yourself! You can win! You can actually be the agressor! The first step is evaluation of the summons. You have to determine if the debt is actually yours, how old is the debt, when did you default (quit paying), what is the applicable statute of limitations, what defenses are available to you, what is the best course of action to take with regard to this particular debt. Second, you need to respond to the summons and complaint by filing either an Answer or Defenses or a Motion to Dismiss based upon a defense. The third step and the step where you can become the active agressor is discovery. In discovery you can serve the other side with written questions (Interrogatories), written document demands (Request for Production of Documents) and facts for them to admit or deny (Requests for Admissions). The answers to your discovery can be used to defeat a debt collection lawsuit or simply make it go away.
