Years ago we were sued by a credit card company. We contacted a lawyer and prepared to file for bankruptcy. Long story short we ended up not being able to afford filing for bankruptcy. At the time the lawyer was asking for something like $1,500 and we were just scraping by so we never went through with it and lived hand to mouth, in debt and with our credit in the crapper for years. Recently I decided to look into our scores and found that with all of the old debts having aged off our CRs our credit was good again. Decided to dig ourselves back out of the hole as best we could. Applied for and received a loan to bring our real estate taxes up to date and make some urgent repairs to our home. In order to refinance our home for a better rate. We were also able to renegotiate our insurance rates down to about a third of what we had been paying as clients with crap credit. Then today we tried to get some money out of our checking for groceries and were informed that there was a levy on our bank accounts. We were only sued once that I am aware of and any other debts would be well beyond the SOL for reporting or legal action in PA. I am guessing that since we were going to file for bankruptcy, we just let them award a default judgment but I honestly don’t know and I can’t find any evidence of a judgment against us. Here’s what I need to know. I have to look for the old paper work but if I had to guess I’d say that was 7 years ago or more, possibly 7-10 years. Where do I find the official information about whether or not there was a judgment? Is this judgment in any way time barred? We were behind on our real estate taxes and received phone calls hourly from a law firm for the past few years so I always assumed that was who they were trying to collect for. Apparently not because the bank gave us a phone number related to the levy and it is the same law firm but our taxes are now current. I have not received anything in writing from this firm and then all of a sudden there is a levy on our account. 7-10 years later. Is this the way things are usually done?? To make matters worse, we just finally started to see the light and now with our accounts frozen, our paychecks are directly deposited and all of our bills including our mortgage payment and the payment on that new loan are automatic debits. This situation is going to cause us bad credit all over again by disrupting our ability to pay our bills.
Can anyone offer some information about this kind of situation in Pennsylvania?
Starting Score: FAKOs EQ 537 TU 497 EX 517
That's the problem with judgements, they can last a really long time. I know where I live, they are good for 10 years, and can be renewed for 10 more years. That's 20 years they can garnish accounts.
So yes, they got a judgement against you and now they have enforced it. Sorry.
You can contact your county courthouse and find out who and how much.
July 2013 score: EQ FICO 819, TU08 778, EX "806 lender pull 07/26/2013
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Current scores after adding $81K in CLs and 2 new cars since July 2013
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June 2017 update: All scores over 820, just pure gardening now.
So how long can this go on? What can we do?
Anyone with knowledge on this subject please chime in...
I did a search with my county court clerk and found that a default judgment was awared against us in 2006. Here's my question... I have read a number of sources online that say that judgments have there own SOL for enforcement, that they do not go on forever. Each site I have found says that in Pennsylvania the SOL on a judgment is 5 years and can be renewed for another 5 years.
Does anyone know if this is true?
If so, if it was renewed, would that be in the docket information?