I’m a guy age 55, I’ll admit that I haven’t been great at managing my finances over the years, I’ve gone through times of being behind with payments and received payment demands, but managed to avoid being taken to court as I have always managed to take up on agreed payment instalments to clear the amounts owed.
However I’ve now got myself into some trouble following a car accident when my insurance had lapsed. This was a genuine mistake on my part but I’ll admit it was rather careless. I was at fault for the accident, it was minor but most of the damage was to the girl’s car that I collided with, she seemed OK but I later found that she had visited hospital and later had a number of follow up treatments.
Her damages costs come to $22,000 which was for some car damage but mainly for her medical costs and other expenses she has incurred. She has produced receipts which I have had checked and advised that they are legit. It turned out that she only had very minimum insurance cover and as I didn’t have insurance cover, so I looked at how I could possibly pay for the amount I am liable for. There is no way I could possibly pay the full $22,000, I also haven’t got the best credit history and only recently moved back to the US after working abroad for some years so taking out a loan for this amount is not an option for me.
I made an offer to pay the $22,000 in instalments of $1000 every month. Paying this amount would cut me down to the bone financially so it is as much as I could offer to pay. She then wrote back to me saying that if I could not pay in full, she would accept monthly payments but only with a court order. The situation with this now is that I’ve been served with court papers and she is suing me for the full $22,000.
I really want to avoid getting sued as I’ve never previously been through this, but at the moment, it’s looking like I could well be screwed as far as avoiding it. If it does go through court, can anyone advise how badly it could affect me regarding things like credit and other personal finances?
