Sued by a Debt Collector in Florida

What the papers mean, what the deadline is, and what to do this week.

Read the summons before you do anything else. Florida has two different tracks, and they have two completely different deadlines.

• If the summons tells you to file a written answer, you have 20 days from the day you were served. Calendar days, not business days.
• If the summons sets a pretrial conference on a specific date and time, that is small claims. You do not file a written answer. You show up on that date. If you do not, the collector is entitled to a default.

That is the whole ballgame, and it is the single most common way people lose these cases — not because they had no defense, but because nobody told them which kind of paper they were holding.

Do not throw the envelope away. Do not call the collector. Do not sign anything or make a payment on an old account before someone looks at it, because on a debt that is already too old to sue on, a signature can bring it back to life.

Bring us the papers. The review is free, and it is not unusual for us to find something. (813) 231-2088.

Jump to a section

1. Read the summons — there are two clocks
2. What happens if you do nothing
3. Who is actually suing you
4. What they have to prove
5. Defenses that actually work
6. The head-of-family exemption
7. When the collector is the one breaking the law
8. Where bankruptcy fits — and where it doesn’t

Part 1: Read the summons — there are two clocks

Short answer: the summons itself tells you which track you are on. Everything depends on reading it correctly.

	Regular county or circuit court	Small claims
What the summons says	You must serve a written answer	Appear for a pretrial conference on a set date
Your deadline	20 days from service	The date printed on the paper
Do you file a written answer?	Yes	No — written defensive pleadings are not required unless the court orders them
If you miss it	The clerk or the court can enter a default	The plaintiff is entitled to a default

Small claims covers claims up to $8,000, not counting costs, interest, and attorney’s fees. Above that, an ordinary credit card or medical debt suit is a regular county court case — Florida county courts now hear civil claims up to $50,000 — and you are on the written-answer track, not small claims.

So the dollar amount is a clue, but it is not the answer. The summons is the answer. A small claims summons is officially a “summons/notice to appear,” and the clerk sets that first pretrial conference within 50 days of the case being filed, which is why these dates arrive fast.

One more thing people get wrong: the pretrial conference is not a trial. It is short, the judge is sorting out what the case is really about, and it is often where a case gets resolved. You still have to be there.

The law behind this: Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.140(a)(1) (“A defendant must serve an answer within 20 days after service of original process and the initial pleading on the defendant”); Fla. Sm. Cl. R. 7.010(b) (small claims applies to demands not exceeding $8,000 exclusive of costs, interest, and attorney’s fees); Fla. Sm. Cl. R. 7.090(a)–(b) (the parties must appear personally or by counsel on the date and time in the summons/notice to appear; the clerk sets the initial pretrial conference not more than 50 days after filing); Fla. Sm. Cl. R. 7.090(c) (written defensive pleadings are not necessary unless the court orders them); Fla. Sm. Cl. R. 7.170(a) (default if the defendant does not appear at the scheduled time); Fla. Stat. § 34.01 (county court civil jurisdiction to $50,000); Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.500 (defaults).

Part 2: What happens if you do nothing

We are going to be concrete about this, because the vagueness is exactly what lets people leave the envelope on the counter for three weeks.

Default → final judgment → collection. Once a judgment is entered, the collector can:

• Garnish your wages — unless you are the head of a family, which is covered in Part 6 and matters enormously
• Levy your bank account, which usually means the money is simply gone one morning with no warning
• Record a judgment lien against real property you own

And it lasts. A Florida judgment remains enforceable for twenty years. A recorded lien on real property runs ten years and can be re-recorded for another ten years. The debt does not quietly go away because you moved or changed jobs.

None of that happens if you respond. Most of it never happens even if you lose, because most people who show up end up with something workable. Silence is the only outcome that is guaranteed to be bad.

The law behind this: Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.500 (defaults); Fla. Stat. ch. 77 (garnishment); Fla. Stat. § 55.10 (judgment lien on real property — initial ten years, extendable by re-recording); Fla. Stat. § 55.081 (no judgment is a lien on real or personal property after twenty years).

Part 3: Who is actually suing you

Short answer: look at the name of the plaintiff, not the name on the card. It changes the whole case.

An original creditor — the bank whose name was on the account — generally has the records. Statements, the cardholder agreement, the payment history. These cases are usually about the numbers and about what you can afford.

A debt buyer is a different animal. Names you will recognize: Midland Funding, Portfolio Recovery Associates, LVNV Funding, Cavalry SPV. They did not lend you anything. They bought your account, in bulk, in a spreadsheet of thousands of accounts, for a few cents on the dollar — often with no account-level documents at all.

To win, a debt buyer has to prove it owns your specific account: the bill of sale, every link in the chain of assignment from the original creditor forward, and records tying that chain to you.

That is where these cases are won. Not because of a technicality, but because someone suing you for thousands of dollars ought to be able to show they own the thing they are suing about.

Part 4: What they have to prove

Whatever theory the complaint pleads — breach of contract, account stated, open account — the plaintiff has to produce the agreement and prove the balance.

And Florida procedure requires them to attach it. Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.130(a) requires the contract or account sued upon to be incorporated in or attached to the complaint.

Read what is actually stapled to yours. Very often it is:

• A generic cardholder agreement with no name, no account number, and no signature — a form, not your contract
• A one-page summary of charges typed by the collector rather than a statement from the original creditor
• An affidavit from someone at the collection company swearing to records they did not create and have never seen
• Nothing at all

That is not automatically fatal to their case, and we will not pretend it is. But it is a real problem for them, it is raised by answering rather than by ignoring, and it is the reason so many of these suits collapse the moment somebody pushes back.

The law behind this: Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.130(a) (documents on which an action is brought must be incorporated in or attached to the pleading).

Part 5: Defenses that actually work

Not every affirmative defense in the book. The ones that decide real Florida cases.

The debt is too old

Florida limits how long a creditor has to sue.

Kind of claim	Period
An action founded on a written instrument — most card agreements and loan notes	five years
An action not founded on a written instrument — open accounts, store accounts, goods sold and delivered	four years

Which one applies depends on what the plaintiff actually has, which is another reason Part 4 matters. And the clock generally runs from the default, not from the last time you thought about the account.

The revival trap — read this before you sign anything

Here is the part that costs people the most money. Under Fla. Stat. § 95.04, an acknowledgment of a time-barred debt, or a promise to pay one, revives it if it is in writing and signed by you.

That is precisely what a debt settlement company will ask you to sign. It is what some “we’ll take $50 a month” letters are designed to produce. A debt that was legally dead can be brought back with a signature and then sued on.

Do not sign anything and do not make a payment on an old account before someone tells you how old it is. More on this on our debt consolidation and settlement page.

They cannot show they own it

See Part 3. No bill of sale, a broken chain of assignment, or an affidavit from someone with no personal knowledge.

They did not attach the contract

See Part 4. Rule 1.130(a).

You were never properly served

This happens constantly. Papers left with a neighbor, dropped at an address you moved out of years ago, or handed to someone who does not live with you. A judgment entered without valid service is vulnerable.

The amount is wrong, or it was already paid or settled

Fees stacked on fees, interest at a rate the agreement never authorized, payments never credited, or an account you settled years ago that got sold anyway.

The law behind this: Fla. Stat. § 95.11(2)(b) (five years — action on a contract, obligation, or liability founded on a written instrument); Fla. Stat. § 95.11(3)(j) (four years — action founded on a contract, obligation, or liability not founded on a written instrument, including the sale and delivery of goods and store accounts); Fla. Stat. § 95.04 (an acknowledgment of, or promise to pay, a debt barred by a statute of limitations must be in writing and signed by the person sought to be charged).

Part 6: The head-of-family exemption

Short answer: if you provide more than half the support of a child or other dependent, and your disposable earnings are $750 a week or less, your wages are entirely exempt from garnishment.

Entirely. Not partly. Not the federal 25%. All of it.

And above $750 a week, the earnings of a head of family still cannot be garnished unless you agreed to it in writing — in a separate document, in at least 14-point type, in the same language as the contract. Almost nobody has signed one.

This is Florida law, it is one of the strongest wage protections in the country, and most people facing a garnishment have never heard of it.

But it is not automatic. You have to claim it, and there is a deadline.

When a creditor garnishes your wages, the plaintiff is required to mail you a “Notice to Defendant” along with a copy of the writ and the motion — within five business days after the writ is issued, or three business days after it is served on your employer, whichever is later.

That notice comes with a form: Claim of Exemption and Request for Hearing. You file it with the clerk, and you have 20 days after the date you receive the notice to do it.

Two things about that deadline are worth saying plainly. It runs from when you receive the notice, not from when the case was filed — so the clock may already be running before you understand what the papers are. And if you miss it, the money starts coming out of your check while you sort it out.

If the plaintiff never sent you the notice, that is a problem for them, not for you. It is a requirement, not a courtesy.

If a garnishment notice has arrived, call the same day. This one is time-boxed in a way the rest of this page is not.

The law behind this: Fla. Stat. § 222.11(1)(c) (head of family — a person providing more than one-half of the support for a child or other dependent); Fla. Stat. § 222.11(2)(a) (all disposable earnings of a head of family that are less than or equal to $750 a week are exempt); Fla. Stat. § 222.11(2)(b) (disposable earnings greater than $750 a week may not be garnished unless the person has agreed otherwise in writing, in the prescribed form); Fla. Stat. § 77.041 (Notice to Defendant; Claim of Exemption and Request for Hearing; 20 days after receipt of the notice to file; plaintiff’s obligation to mail the notice within five business days of issuance of the writ or three business days after service on the garnishee, whichever is later).

Part 7: When the collector is the one breaking the law

Being sued is not always the end of the story. Sometimes the lawsuit itself is the violation.

Suing on a debt that is already time-barred. Filing in the wrong county. Misstating the amount. Threatening things they cannot legally do. Calling you after you are represented by a lawyer. These are violations of the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Florida’s Consumer Collection Practices Act.

Venue is the one people miss. Federal law requires a collector to sue you where you signed the contract or where you live now — not where it is convenient for the collector. Suits filed in the wrong county are common, and they are actionable.

Both statutes provide for actual damages, statutory damages up to $1,000, and attorney’s fees paid by the collector. That fee-shifting is the practical point: it means a claim like this can be brought by someone who has no money, which is the entire reason Congress wrote it that way.

The deadlines are short — one year under the federal statute, two years under Florida’s — so this is worth raising early rather than after the case ends.

Bring us the letters, the voicemails, the texts, and the court papers. The review is free. More on your rights when a collector breaks the law.

The law behind this: 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq. (FDCPA); 15 U.S.C. § 1692i(a) (venue — the judicial district where the consumer signed the contract sued upon or where the consumer resides at the commencement of the action); 15 U.S.C. § 1692k(a)(2)(A) (additional damages not exceeding $1,000), § 1692k(a)(3) (costs and a reasonable attorney’s fee), 15 U.S.C. § 1692k(d) (action must be brought within one year from the date the violation occurs); Fla. Stat. § 559.72 (prohibited practices); Fla. Stat. § 559.77(2) (actual damages, additional statutory damages not exceeding $1,000, court costs and reasonable attorney’s fees, and punitive damages where warranted); Fla. Stat. § 559.77(4) (action must be commenced within two years after the date the alleged violation occurred).

Part 8: Where bankruptcy fits — and where it doesn’t

Filing stops the lawsuit the day it is filed. Not after a hearing, not when a judge gets to it — immediately, by operation of federal law. A trial set for tomorrow does not happen. A garnishment stops.

And a judgment lien that is already recorded can often be avoided in bankruptcy where it impairs an exemption you are entitled to — meaning the lien comes off, not just the debt.

But here is the honest other half. If you have a real defense — the debt is too old, they cannot prove they own it, you already paid it — then defending the case may be the better answer, and it may cost you less. If this is one lawsuit and the rest of your finances are stable, bankruptcy is a large tool for a small problem.

Bankruptcy earns its place when the lawsuit is a symptom rather than the disease: when there are four more creditors behind this one, when the wage garnishment is already running, when you are choosing between the electric bill and the minimum payment.

We will tell you which of those we think you are. If it is the first one, we will say so. What bankruptcy costs.

The law behind this: 11 U.S.C. § 362(a) (the automatic stay, effective on filing, staying the continuation of a judicial proceeding and acts to collect); 11 U.S.C. § 522(f) (avoidance of judicial liens that impair an exemption).

If you were served this week

1. Do not throw the papers away, and do not let them sit. Photograph every page, front and back, including the envelope.
2. Write down the date you were served. Every deadline on this page counts from that day.
3. Read whether it says “answer” or “pretrial conference.” That one word decides what you have to do and when.
4. Do not call the collector’s lawyer. Anything you say can be used, and an offer to pay can revive a debt that was too old to sue on.
5. Do not sign anything — no settlement, no payment plan, no stipulated judgment — before someone reviews it.
6. Gather what you have: the statements, the letters, the texts and voicemails, anything showing what you paid and when.
7. Call. Even if the deadline has passed. Even if a judgment has already been entered. There is usually more room than people think, and there is considerably more of it before the deadline than after.

(813) 231-2088 — the consultation is free.

About this article

Written by Alan Dexter Borden, a Florida consumer bankruptcy and debt defense attorney admitted to The Florida Bar in 2008 and admitted in all three of Florida’s federal districts.

Last reviewed: September 2, 2026.

This article is general information about Florida and federal law, not legal advice about your situation. Every case is different, and the deadlines and dollar figures described here can change. Reading this does not create an attorney-client relationship.