Imagine receiving a lawsuit in the mail claiming you owe $4,200 on an old credit card.
You don’t recognize the company suing you. Maybe the account was sold to a debt buyer you’ve never heard of. Maybe you recognize the card but disagree with the amount. Maybe you experienced a job loss, divorce, illness, or other financial setback. Maybe you simply don’t know whether the company suing you can actually prove what it claims.
The paperwork tells you that you have to respond.
Eventually, you may have to appear in court.
There’s just one problem.
Court is at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday. You are supposed to be at work at 8:00 a.m.
You are paid by the hour.
You don’t have paid time off.
You have two children to support.
Missing work means losing $150 in wages. You may have to pay another $75 for childcare. And your supervisor has already warned employees about missing shifts.
So what do you do?
For millions of Americans sued over consumer debts, this isn’t a hypothetical question.
It is what “access to justice” can look like in real life.
And too often, the answer is devastatingly simple:
They don’t go.
Then they lose.
The System May Be Technically Available—but Is It Really Accessible?
Our court system is based on an important principle: both sides should have an opportunity to be heard.
On paper, a consumer sued for credit card debt has that opportunity.
The consumer can respond to the complaint.
The consumer can challenge the plaintiff’s evidence.
The consumer can raise defenses.
The consumer can request documents.
The consumer can appear at hearings or trial.
The consumer may be able to challenge whether the plaintiff owns the account, whether the amount claimed is correct, whether the lawsuit was filed within the applicable limitations period, and whether the plaintiff can prove its case.
Those rights sound meaningful.
But rights that people cannot realistically exercise aren’t nearly as valuable as they appear on paper.
For a salaried professional with flexible hours, appearing in court on a weekday morning may be inconvenient.
For an hourly employee living paycheck to paycheck, it may mean choosing between defending a lawsuit and buying groceries.
Consider the Single Mother Working an Hourly Job
Imagine a single mother working at a warehouse for $18 an hour.
Her shift begins at 7:00 a.m.
She receives notice that a debt collection case is scheduled for 10:00 a.m.
The courthouse is 40 minutes from her home.
She doesn’t know whether the hearing will take 15 minutes or three hours.
She doesn’t know whether she’ll be called first or last.
Her employer doesn’t offer paid leave for attending a civil debt collection hearing.
So attending court could cost her most of a day’s wages.
Then there is childcare.
Her children normally go directly from school to an after-school program that closes at 6:00 p.m. If court runs late or she needs to meet with an attorney, she has to make other arrangements.
She may also have transportation expenses.
And all of this is happening because someone is suing her because she allegedly doesn’t have enough money to pay a debt.
Think about the irony.
The system asks a financially struggling person to sacrifice additional income in order to explain to the system why she is financially struggling.
Hourly Workers Face a Completely Different Reality
For many hourly employees, “just take off work” isn’t an option.
Restaurant workers.
Home health aides.
Retail employees.
Warehouse workers.
Construction workers.
Delivery drivers.
Daycare employees.
Hotel workers.
Nursing assistants.
Gig workers.
Many are paid only when they work.
Some receive their schedules only days in advance.
Others work under attendance policies where even legitimate absences can create problems.
Someone earning $17 per hour who misses eight hours of work loses $136 before taxes.
That may not sound enormous in the context of a lawsuit seeking several thousand dollars.
But to someone living paycheck to paycheck, $136 might be the electric bill.
It might be groceries.
It might be gas for the week.
It might be part of the rent.
Now add parking, transportation and childcare.
The price of defending yourself can become hundreds of dollars before anyone even discusses whether the debt collector’s case is valid.
And Then There Is the Lawyer Problem
The imbalance becomes even more obvious when you look at who appears on each side.
The creditor or debt buyer often has an attorney.
That attorney handles debt collection cases professionally.
The attorney understands court procedure.
The attorney knows what documents to file.
The attorney knows the rules of evidence.
The attorney knows what deadlines matter.
The consumer frequently has none of those advantages.
Most people sued over a $2,000, $5,000 or $10,000 credit card account cannot justify paying thousands of dollars to hire an attorney by the hour.
That creates an uncomfortable economic reality.
The smaller the debt, the harder it may be to justify the cost of defending the lawsuit—even when the consumer has legitimate defenses.
So consumers often walk into court alone against lawyers and companies that may handle hundreds or thousands of similar cases.
Some consumers never walk into court at all.
Default Judgments Change Everything
When a consumer doesn’t properly respond to a lawsuit or fails to appear when required, the plaintiff may be able to obtain a default judgment, subject to the rules of the particular jurisdiction.
That means the creditor can potentially win without the consumer ever presenting a defense on the merits.
The court may never hear the consumer’s side of the story.
The consumer may never ask the creditor to prove its records.
Nobody may meaningfully challenge the balance.
Nobody may challenge the chain of assignment when a debt has been sold.
Nobody may raise applicable defenses.
Instead, the procedural failure itself can become decisive.
And once a judgment exists, the situation can become far more serious.
Depending on state law and the consumer’s circumstances, a judgment creditor may have collection remedies that were unavailable before obtaining the judgment, potentially including wage garnishment, bank account attachment, liens, or other post-judgment collection procedures.
Interest may also continue accumulating.
A consumer who was struggling before the lawsuit can therefore find herself in an even more difficult financial position afterward.
A Default Doesn’t Necessarily Mean the Consumer Agreed With the Debt
This distinction is important.
When we hear that a creditor “won” a debt collection lawsuit, we may imagine a judge carefully reviewing both sides’ evidence and deciding that the creditor proved its case.
Sometimes that happens.
But a default judgment is fundamentally different.
The defendant may never have participated meaningfully in the case.
Maybe the consumer didn’t understand the paperwork.
Maybe the consumer thought calling the creditor was enough.
Maybe the consumer missed a deadline.
Maybe the consumer couldn’t find childcare.
Maybe the consumer was afraid of losing her job.
Maybe the consumer had no transportation.
Maybe the consumer believed there was no point in appearing because she couldn’t afford an attorney.
Maybe the consumer simply froze.
None of those things necessarily answers the underlying question:
Could the plaintiff have proven its case if the consumer had appeared and defended it?
Yet the practical result can be the same as if the case had been fully litigated.
Judgment for the plaintiff.
Debt Collection Litigation Is Particularly Vulnerable to This Problem
Credit card lawsuits often involve relatively modest amounts of money compared with other civil litigation.
That matters.
If someone is sued over a $2 million business dispute, both sides have an enormous economic incentive to retain attorneys and litigate aggressively.
If someone earning $40,000 a year is sued for $3,800, the economics are completely different.
Paying an attorney thousands of dollars may seem impossible.
Taking repeated days off work may be impossible.
Spending dozens of hours learning civil procedure may be impossible.
But the consequences of doing nothing can still be significant.
That creates a system in which the economics themselves can discourage participation.
Debt Buyers Add Another Layer
Many consumers are surprised to discover that the company suing them isn’t the bank that issued the credit card.
It may be a debt buyer.
Creditors sometimes sell charged-off accounts, and those accounts can potentially be sold or transferred again.
A consumer may therefore receive a lawsuit captioned with the name of a company the consumer has never knowingly done business with.
Naturally, the consumer asks:
“Who are these people?”
That question isn’t necessarily unreasonable.
Ownership of a debt is an important part of a collection case. A plaintiff generally must establish that it has the legal right to pursue the claim.
But understanding assignments, account records, affidavits and evidentiary requirements isn’t intuitive for someone who has never been inside a courtroom.
A sophisticated corporate plaintiff may understand exactly what it needs to establish.
The consumer may not even know what questions to ask.
The Courthouse Wasn’t Designed Around the Modern Working Family
Another problem is structural.
Courts traditionally operate during business hours.
Of course they do. Judges, clerks and courthouse employees have working hours too.
But traditional courthouse schedules can impose disproportionate burdens on people whose jobs offer little flexibility.
A 10:00 a.m. hearing may effectively require an hourly worker to miss an entire shift.
Why?
Because employers don’t necessarily allow someone to disappear for an unpredictable amount of time in the middle of a workday.
A hearing scheduled for 10:00 doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll leave the courthouse at 10:20.
There may be dozens of cases on the docket.
There may be delays.
There may be negotiations.
There may be paperwork afterward.
An employee therefore can’t always tell a supervisor:
“I’ll be gone exactly 43 minutes.”
For many workers, court means taking the day off.
Technology Has Shown Us There May Be Better Options
One of the lessons of the last several years is that not every court proceeding necessarily requires everyone to be physically present in the same room.
Remote appearances can dramatically change the economics for consumers.
Consider the same single mother.
An in-person hearing might require:
- missing four to eight hours of work;
- driving to the courthouse;
- paying for parking;
- arranging childcare; and
- waiting for the case to be called.
A remote proceeding might allow her, where permitted, to participate from a private location without spending hours traveling and waiting inside a courthouse.
Remote proceedings aren’t appropriate for every matter, and they create their own challenges.
But consumer debt cases are exactly where courts should at least consider whether technology can reduce unnecessary barriers to participation.
Evening Sessions Could Make a Difference Too
Why must virtually every routine consumer debt proceeding occur while most defendants are supposed to be working?
Some jurisdictions have experimented with evening court sessions and other scheduling alternatives.
That deserves serious consideration.
If thousands of working people are being sued in high-volume consumer collection cases, the justice system should ask whether scheduling practices unintentionally make it harder for those defendants to participate.
Convenience isn’t the point.
Meaningful access is.
Simplifying the Response Process Matters
Court paperwork can also be intimidating.
Lawyers forget how strange legal documents look to people who don’t work in the profession.
“Complaint.”
“Answer.”
“Affirmative defense.”
“Service.”
“Motion.”
“Default.”
“Judgment.”
“Execution.”
“Interrogatories.”
To attorneys, these are ordinary terms.
To someone who has never been sued before, the documents can feel like they are written in another language.
Courts have made progress in developing self-help materials and simplified forms in many jurisdictions.
More can be done.
A consumer receiving a debt lawsuit should be able to determine quickly:
What am I being sued for?
How long do I have to respond?
Where do I file my response?
Do I have to appear in person?
What happens if I don’t respond?
Where can I obtain legal help?
Those answers shouldn’t require a law degree.
Legal Aid Helps—but Resources Are Limited
Legal aid organizations do extraordinary work.
But demand often exceeds available resources.
And eligibility requirements mean that many working consumers earn too much to qualify for free legal assistance while simultaneously earning nowhere near enough to comfortably hire private counsel.
This is sometimes called the justice gap.
It includes people who aren’t impoverished enough to qualify for certain assistance programs but aren’t financially secure enough to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees.
A single parent earning $50,000 per year may fall directly into that gap.
On paper, she has income.
In reality, after housing, childcare, food, insurance, transportation and utilities, there may be very little left.
Then a debt collection lawsuit arrives.
There Is Something Fundamentally Troubling About Winning Because the Other Side Couldn’t Participate
Creditors have rights.
If money is legitimately owed, the legal system must provide a mechanism for creditors to pursue lawful claims.
The answer isn’t to eliminate debt collection lawsuits or assume every consumer is right and every creditor is wrong.
The issue is whether the process provides a realistic opportunity for both sides to participate.
There is an enormous difference between a creditor winning because it proved its case after the defendant had a meaningful opportunity to challenge it and a creditor winning because the defendant couldn’t afford to miss Tuesday’s shift.
Procedural rules are necessary.
Deadlines are necessary.
Courts need cases to move forward.
But we should also be willing to ask whether those rules operate fairly when applied to the economic realities of ordinary working people.
A Lawsuit Should Be Decided on Its Merits Whenever Possible
Justice works best when both sides participate.
If the creditor owns the account and can prove the amount due, let it prove that.
If the consumer has a valid defense, let the consumer raise it.
If the parties can reach a reasonable settlement, give them an opportunity to do so.
What shouldn’t determine the outcome is whether one party can afford to sit in a courthouse for four hours on a Wednesday morning.
A person’s ability to defend a lawsuit shouldn’t depend upon whether her employer offers paid time off.
It shouldn’t depend upon whether she can find a babysitter.
It shouldn’t depend upon whether missing a shift means missing the electric payment.
And it shouldn’t depend upon whether she can afford to hire a lawyer simply to understand what the paperwork means.
If You Are Sued, Don’t Ignore It
As unfair as some of these realities may be, ignoring a debt collection lawsuit can make the problem significantly worse.
If you receive court papers, pay attention to them immediately.
Do not assume that calling the creditor stops the lawsuit.
Do not assume that you don’t need to respond because you don’t recognize the plaintiff’s name.
Do not assume that because you cannot afford to pay the claimed balance, there is no reason to defend the case.
And don’t assume the creditor automatically wins simply because it filed a lawsuit.
There may be deadlines measured in days, and the applicable rules differ dramatically from state to state.
Contact an attorney, legal aid organization, court self-help center or other appropriate resource as soon as possible.
Most importantly, do not let a lawsuit sit unopened on the kitchen counter.
Justice Shouldn’t Be a Luxury
Our civil justice system should not function differently for someone earning $18 an hour than it does for someone earning $180 an hour.
Yet as a practical matter, it often does.
One person can tell an assistant to clear the afternoon, hire an attorney and continue earning a salary while the case is handled.
Another person has to ask a manager for permission to miss a shift, arrange childcare, lose a day’s wages and walk into a courthouse alone.
Both technically have the same right to defend themselves.
But those rights don’t necessarily feel equal.
When consumers lose cases simply because they couldn’t navigate the process or couldn’t afford to participate in it, we should be willing to question whether procedural access is truly access to justice.
Creditors deserve their day in court.
Consumers deserve theirs too.
And whether someone gets that day should never depend on whether they can afford to take the day off work.
This article is for general educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Debt collection procedures, deadlines, defenses and post-judgment remedies vary significantly by state and court. Anyone who receives a lawsuit should promptly determine the applicable deadlines and consider obtaining advice from an attorney licensed in the relevant jurisdiction.
