proper service for court appearance

You need to go to the court and have the judgment vacated due to improper service. What state are you in? It may be that this account is past SOL...I think I would try to counter sue them since you have proof they know where you are...do you have any of those letters they sent? I would use that as proof they deliberately tried to serve you at a wrong address to obtain an illegal judgment.

yes i definitely have their letters I live in Ohio and I am trying to clean up my credit and I just wonder what would have happened had my ex not got a hold of me at all and i didnt know this judgement was even out there.

hiya--
some thoughts....

1--how do you know that the creditor knew your current address? Proving this is not as easy as most people think it is, because most people think 'they sent me a letter demanding payment last year, so they know where to find me'. the problem with that logic is that most of the time, they never got a response when they sent that letter, so there is no actual concrete way to prove that they indeed did know where you live. Now, if you had spoken with them in this time, and confirmed your address, or if you have had correspondence back and forth, then you have a better chance of proving this. However, proving it is not needed to prove improper service--you will simply need to show that you no longer lived at that address during the time that the summons was served. It is then up to the court whether or not they will accept that as good enough to vacate the judgment. you can say "I have all these letters", but unless you responded to them, they can simply say "we never got any response, so we cannot say with any certainty that it was a good address to reach her. We then researched, and found that she had lived at this other one, and it was the best shot we had...."--that could be enough to get them off the hook if you tried to claim that they knew where you lived.

2--age of the debt. Do you know when the last payment was made? The statute of limitations could be expired, and if it is, that is the best way to make the lawsuit disappear completely. if the SOL has expired before the date they filed their complaint with the court, then I would be sure to mention this in the order to show cause. The order to show cause is simply a document you file with the court where they sued you-this is the statement you make to request that they vacate the judgment due to improper service. If the SOL has passed, I would include a statement like this in there:

The applicable statute of limitations expired on this debt before the plaintiff filed suit. Due to this, had I known about the suit against me, I would have used the affirmative defense that the statute of limitations was expired, and the case should have been dismissed. Since I was not properly served, I was not afforded my right to due process in this case. As a result, the plaintiff was awarded a judgment without proper consideration of the law. Plaintiff had every opportunity to collect on this debt within the framework of Ohio state statutes, and chose not to do so. The plaintiff should not be rewarded for letting the statute of limitations run out by getting a default judgment because they served the summons at an address that they knew to no longer be valid.

you get the idea. Sure, it sounds long and "legalese", but for some reason judges seem to understand that better than plain english sometimes. Strange but true.

3--you live in Ohio now, is that where they served you as well? is that where the old address is? Also, is the old address in the same county as where you live now? If it is not, then you also have them on improper venue--by law, they can only sue you on a debt collection case in your current county of residence, or where the debt originated.