judgement vacate inproper service

[chinarydr]

Hello. I am new here, and getting my feet wet with cleaning up my credit report. I was wanting to get thoughts on this... let's say you get a judgement vacated due to inproper service. Is it likely that CA will just turn right around and refile ASAP? Do you think CA would have any reason to work with you on a payment plan to satify amount owed, our would they just go right to refiling? Reason i ask is, had a judgement against me, and papers were served at an addy I haven't lived at for a few years. It is a legit debt that just got lost in shuffle of divorce, etc. Debt is 2.7k Thanks

[gdale6]

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@chinarydr wrote:
Hello. I am new here, and getting my feet wet with cleaning up my credit report. I was wanting to get thoughts on this... let's say you get a judgement vacated due to inproper service. Is it likely that CA will just turn right around and refile ASAP? Do you think CA would have any reason to work with you on a payment plan to satify amount owed, our would they just go right to refiling? Reason i ask is, had a judgement against me, and papers were served at an addy I haven't lived at for a few years. It is a legit debt that just got lost in shuffle of divorce, etc. Debt is 2.7k Thanks

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If you were improperly served I would move for vacating the judgment even if it was my debt, the law is the law on service to the defendant. They may not be able to get a successful judgment against you again it would depend on the expiration of states SOL for the type of debt that it is. Once the judgment gets vacated and you know that they cannot win a suit against you again that is the time to settle before they hit your CR with it (assuming its not more than 7.5 yrs past the OCs DoFD already).

[AirlinerDudeB6]

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@chinarydr wrote:
Hello. I am new here, and getting my feet wet with cleaning up my credit report. I was wanting to get thoughts on this... let's say you get a judgement vacated due to inproper service. Is it likely that CA will just turn right around and refile ASAP? Do you think CA would have any reason to work with you on a payment plan to satify amount owed, our would they just go right to refiling? Reason i ask is, had a judgement against me, and papers were served at an addy I haven't lived at for a few years. It is a legit debt that just got lost in shuffle of divorce, etc. Debt is 2.7k Thanks

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Without giving too much legal advise here...I think you may need to better understand what it means to vacate a judgment.

When you file an "order to show cause" to vacate a judgment, you are basically "asking" the judge to throw out his/her original ruling on the case, but not the case itself, for a specific reason.  In your situation, you believe you were improperly served (which is definitely a good reason).  However, be prepared for a traverse hearing in which the details of how you were served must be presented by the Plaintiff and Process Server.  If the court determines that there was "lack of jurisdiction" (meaning you were not served properly), only then would the case would be dismissed. 

Technically, the Plaintiff can file the lawsuit again. However as gdale stated above, if the SOL has expired, you could use that as an affirmative defense.

[chinarydr]

Thank you both very much. It did help enlighten me a bit. Many Thanks!!