Here are my advices.

1. CHECK SOL
First of all, check if they sued you when the debt was out of statute of limitations (SOL) in your state.

For example, in California, the SOL for signed contract is 4 years. and for un-signed contract, it’s 2 years.

That means, if you acquired a credit card by signing on a contract(as most do), once you defaulted (Stop paying bills) on it, then they have 4 years before they can sue you from the day you late on the payment for the first time. After 4 years, they can still generally sue you. But you can go to court and bring up this SOL as your affirmitive defenese in front of the judge, you will win the case 100%.
In some state, like California, they can NOT even sue you if the debt is out of SOL. It’s simply illegal in California. If this is what happened, you can ask court to cancel the judgment and ask the court to have the collection agency to pay YOU for this violation.

Also, note that, if they don’t have your ‘original’ signed contract , the SOL in this case could be 2 years (in California) because this can be considered un-signed contract.

2. CHECK COURT PROCEDURE ON SERVING SUMMON
If you live in a state where they can sue you even if the debt is out of SOL,
How did they serve the paper? I mean how did they take the summon to you? There are specific court legal procedures on this issue. If they did not serve you (show you, or send you) the summon in a proper way, you can ask court to cancel the judgment.
For example, there are some time limit on how soon they have to serve you once they file a lawsuit. They can not file a lawsuit and serve you like 20 years later. Generally it is 30 days after they filed the lawsuit. If they broke this procedure, you could make something out of this.
Also, they have to file a lwasuit where YOU live but not where ‘THEY’ live. You live in Orange county but they sued you in Los Angeles county, then that is wrong.
Have you ever received a summon? Did they serve at your old address even if they know your new address? Did they serve you personally? Did they leave the paper on your doorway? or did they let someone under age of 18 deliver the summon to you?
Court procedures tell you how a summon must be served. See if they violated any of those.

If they made any violations, you can tell them about your intention to ask court to cancel the judgment. Then maybe you can come out with a good settlement with them even if you don’t actually do anything legally. Just threaten them to get better settlement.

Please know that they paid only 2 or 3% of original debt amount to purchase the debt. If your original debt was $10,000, then they probably paid $200-$300 to buy the debt from the original creditor or from the previous collection agency. So in this case, if you pay you $3000, then they are making a nice $2700-$2800 profit.

Just know that they paid really really tiny amount on the debt to buy it. So you know how much they can accept to at least make this even.

>5년전 실패로 그때 빚을 해결하지 못해서 결국은 콜렉션에서
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>수를 했네요.
>
>결과는 제가 코트에 가지 안아서 디폴트로 되었구요.
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>어떻게든지 파산은 막아볼려고 버티었답니다.
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>한군데가 아니고 3군데 정도 되는데 합쳐서 3만불 조금 넘네요.
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>남들은 30만불도 끄떡도 안던데…..에효.
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>해서 파산 변호사 한테 한테 상담을 하러갔었는데
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>금액도 작고 하니 수 한쪽하고 타협만 해보라 하는말씀만 하시네요.
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>전 그냥 확 파산 하고 싶은데 말입니다.
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>지금 현재 렌트미 내고 에어컨 안나오는 변차 굴리고 가까스로 버팁니다.
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>건 그렇고 이런 경우 상대방쪽에서 저한테 할수 있는방법은 많이있겠지요.
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>차라리 게네들 회사에 가서 일하고라도 빚을 갚앗으면 하는 마음이네요.
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>투잡을 해도 안되니 원……
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>제이름으로된 은행이건 무어건 간에 죽은지 오랩니다.
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>아무것도 없구요.
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>차라리 확 강물로 가고 싶은 맘이 매일 입니다.
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>삶에 조언 부탁 합니다.자격도 없지마는…….