What action can be taken if a debt collection agency sued you and default judgment was passed for an unpaid debt if you are temporarily out of the country for a 1 year assignment?

Answer 1

A motion or application for an order vacating or setting aside the judgment may be made if service of the complaint had not been made properly. Before a judgment can be entered against a debtor, the complaint must be served on the debtor personally or sometimes if the court allows, by certified mail. If the debtor was not served with the complaint because he was out of the country and if he did not know about the lawsuit, the judgment entered would be void. But because the judgment is on the public record as a judgment, the debtor has to ask the court to set it aside. If the court agrees that the judgment should be set aside, it will enter an order vacating the judgment , but it will also reinstate the case as if it were just filed. By filing the motion to vacate the judgment, the debtor has automatically acknowledged service of the complaint, so there is no longer a need for the plaintiff to serve it and the case will start again. In addition to this, a debtor in that situation should also review very carefully the documents the collection agency filed in order to prove to the court that the debtor was properly served. If that "proof" was falsified, the agency could be in violation of state and federal debt collection laws, perjury laws and contempt of court rules.