There’s a nationwide study that shows that ninety-five percent of people don’t respond to their debt collection lawsuit.

But if you’ve filed a response to the lawsuit, that means the case is almost going to land in a trial. Most people see the idea of going to court, facing a debt collector’s attorney, or even testifying in court as an intimidating process.

But, there’s a way you can resolve this lawsuit without going through the whole trial process. This approach makes you less anxious or stressed out.

Here are three ways you can achieve that;

• Evaluate your case: You need to evaluate your case to determine if you have a strong defense like the statute of limitations. Statutes of limitations in each state have various laws that show how long a creditor has from the time you stopped paying on the cards before they can file a lawsuit against you. Now, the statute of limitations for credit card debt varies across the different states in the country.
  
  If they file a lawsuit after the expiration period, then you can ask the court to dismiss the case.
  
  For example, if you default on a credit card payment and the credit card company has six years to file a lawsuit against you. If they file after that time, then you can ask the court to dismiss the case.
  
  To dismiss the case, you will file a written motion of dismiss with the court stating what the statute of limitations is, the reason why they violated the statute of limitations, and why their case should be dismissed.
  
  Sometimes, this is often done through the motion for summary judgment but in most cases especially when you are representing yourself, it’s enough to file the motion to dismiss.
  
  If this motion is ruled in your favor, you might get some compensation under the Federal Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) which states that creditors cannot sue you for the debt you don’t owe and that if the statute of limitation has expired, they may be opening themselves to liability.
  
  Use the private arbitration clause: If the lawsuit was made within the time stated in the statute of limitations. You can always point your creditors to a private arbitration clause that comes along with the terms and conditions of your card.
  
  So, what you can do is tell the judge to dismiss the case by filing a motion to compel private arbitration, you can attach a copy of the arbitration clause to that.
  
  When you file this, oftentimes your creditors wouldn’t participate in this process because they are the ones filing a lawsuit against you and they are going to be responsible for paying some expensive fees which most often than not would be more than what they are collecting from you so they are just going to let you off the hook.
  
  Settlement: This is you trying to find a middle ground, offering different proposals to your creditor (this is often always lower than the amount filed against you initially) and in most cases, this third approach works well.
  
  In short, instead of worrying about having to go to court over a debt collection lawsuit, you can try to find out if the statute of limitations has expired, check out for a private arbitrator clause, or try to settle for a lower amount than you were filed for.