How to defend yourself from credit card lawsuit in Washington State pro se - Step 1
- Peter Schneider
- Jun 10
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 10
Are you being sued for credit card debt and you don't have the financial resources to hire a lawyer to defend you?
Here are our general recommendations to take the first step to defend yourself pro se.
File an answer with the court [the mailing address should be in the summons], and serve a copy of your answer to the plaintiff's lawyer at the address shown in the complaint. This will prevent their getting a default judgment, and will require the plaintiff and the court to serve you a copy of all future court filings.
We have a sample Answer you can download and modify for your uses, along with changes that definitely need to be made for your situation.
If in doubt, read the civil rules. The civil rules for District Court are similar but slightly different than for Superior Court.
And that's it for Step 1. The grim reality is 95% of people sued for credit card debt don't respond to the lawsuit and the collection agency or bank gets a default judgment on them. By filing an Answer you just became a much harder target. They'll probably ignore you for a bit, perhaps sending you some requests for admission that YOU MUST NOT IGNORE, but at some point they might come back with a Motion for Summary Judgment and you might need our Step 2. Ping us if you get Requests for Admissions, or a Motion for Summary Judgment.
Yes, you heard that correctly. Just because you can't afford to straight up hire us doesn't mean we won't help you. We will still help you as we can.
Do you have a question or a telemarketing, debt collection, bankruptcy, contract, consumer protection, or appellant case that would make a great blog article? We might even review your pro-se complaint or motion in a blog post. Email peter@nwdebtresolution.com and/or nathen@nwdebtresolution.com and we may answer it for everyone!
The thoughts, opinions and musings of this blog are those of Peter Schneider, a consumer advocate and Washington State plaintiff's TCPA attorney at Northwest Debt Resolution, LLC. They are just that, his thoughts, opinions and musings and should be treated as such. They are not legal advice. If you are looking to file a lawsuit for TCPA violations and unwanted calls please contact me for a consultation.
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