If you are being sued by a junk debt buyer and they have attached the original contract from the original creditor, your next step is to get them to prove that they own the debt.

First and foremost:

• What do you consider the “original contract” to be?
• Is this the contract that you signed?
• Or is this just a customer agreement?

Don’t be fooled here. Don’t consider a customer agreement to be your original contract and make sure that you check the copyright date that the customer agreement has on it. Is it the year you had a credit card open with the original creditor?

It is not a good sign if they have that original contract. However, they still have more proving to do. If they have attached the original contract but no proof that they are the assignee of your account, they have not proven that they are the real party in interest.

If they have attached the contract and the assignment signed by the original creditor stating that they have transferred all of their rights to the assignee, they have quite a bit against you and you may want to consider a settlement or hiring a lawyer.

Contract and number assignment – they must prove they are the real party in interest.

Keep in mind that the original creditor could have signed this over to another junk debt buyer or collection agency before the one that is suing you. This might mean that they do not have proof of assignment and must show that chain of assignment includes their company having the legal right to sue you for that debt.

Make sure that the amount they are suing you for is proven as well. Make sure that the customer agreement has the same copyright date as the dates you had the account open with the original creditor.

In my case, Capital One filed a customer agreement dated from 2005. I didn’t have an account with them in 2005. I filed a motion to strike the customer agreement because it was irrelevant and won that case because Capital One couldn’t come up with the 2002 agreement that governed my account.