If you don’t respond to a lawsuit by the deadline printed on your summons, you lose automatically. The court enters a default judgment against you, which means the plaintiff wins without having to prove their case, and they walk away with a court order they can use to garnish your wages, freeze your bank accounts, and attach liens to your property. That judgment can stay enforceable for 5 to 20 years depending on your state, and in most states the creditor can renew it before it expires. Ignoring the paperwork is the single costliest move you can make.
The Deadline You’re About to Miss
When you’re served with a summons and complaint, the clock starts. In federal court, you have 21 days to file a written response.1Legal Information Institute (LII) / Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 12 – Defenses and Objections: When and How Presented State courts set their own windows, typically 20 to 30 days. The exact number is printed on the summons itself. Missing it by a single day can cost you the case.
Once the deadline passes with no response, the plaintiff’s attorney asks the court clerk to record your failure to appear. This step is called entry of default. From there, the plaintiff moves for a default judgment: a court order declaring you liable and, in most cases, ordering you to pay a specific sum.2Legal Information Institute (LII) / Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 55 – Default; Default Judgment
How the dollar amount gets fixed depends on the claim. If the suit seeks a sum that can be calculated from a contract or debt record, the clerk can enter judgment without a hearing. If the damages are disputed, as with a personal injury claim, the plaintiff has to present evidence at a hearing to prove what you owe. You have no voice in that hearing. You’ve already lost on liability, so the court accepts the plaintiff’s version of the facts, and whatever number comes out of it becomes your debt.
What a Default Judgment Lets a Creditor Do
A default judgment turns the plaintiff into a judgment creditor with court-backed authority to go after your income and assets. They don’t need your cooperation, and they can use several tools at once.
Garnish Your Wages
The most common collection method is wage garnishment. The creditor gets a court order, serves it on your employer, and the employer is then legally required to withhold a portion of each paycheck and send it to the creditor. For ordinary consumer debts, federal law caps garnishment at 25% of your disposable earnings, or the amount by which your weekly disposable earnings exceed $217.50, whichever produces the smaller garnishment.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1673 – Restriction on Garnishment That floor comes from 30 times the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. If you make $217.50 or less in disposable weekly income, your wages are fully protected from consumer-debt garnishment.
Different ceilings apply to other obligations. Child support and alimony can take 50% to 60% of disposable earnings, with another 5% added when payments run more than 12 weeks behind. Defaulted federal student loans allow up to 15%.4U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #30: Wage Garnishment Protections of the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA) Some states cap garnishment more tightly than the federal rule, so your actual exposure may be lower.
Freeze and Drain Your Bank Account
A creditor with a judgment can get a separate court order telling your bank to lock up non-exempt funds in your account up to the amount of the judgment and hand that money over. This often happens with no advance warning. People regularly discover a levy when a debit card is declined or a check bounces.
Put a Lien on Your Property
By filing the judgment with the county records office, a creditor creates a lien against any real estate you own in that county. The lien doesn’t force an immediate sale, but it attaches to the title and blocks you from selling or refinancing without paying the judgment first. A buyer’s title search will flag it, and the property becomes effectively unmarketable until the debt clears.
Collect More Than the Original Amount
The judgment doesn’t sit still. Post-judgment interest begins accruing the day it’s entered, and because interest compounds and judgments last for years, what you owe can grow well beyond the number on the original order.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 1961 – Interest State rates vary.
What Creditors Can’t Take
Some income and property is off limits. Federal benefits deposited into your bank account have strong protection: Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, veterans’ benefits, federal railroad retirement, and federal employee retirement payments generally cannot be seized by judgment creditors.6Federal Register. Garnishment of Accounts Containing Federal Benefit Payments When a garnishment order hits your bank, federal regulations require the bank to review the last two months of deposits and keep any amount traceable to those protected benefits accessible to you.7eCFR. 31 CFR Part 212 – Garnishment of Accounts Containing Federal Benefit Payments
Most states protect a portion of your home equity through a homestead exemption. The protected amount swings widely by state: some shield unlimited equity subject to acreage caps, others offer no general homestead protection. Many states also exempt basic personal property like clothing, household furnishings, work tools, and a vehicle up to a set value. Check your state’s rules before assuming anything is safe or exposed.
You Can Be Ordered to Reveal Every Account You Have
Creditors don’t guess where your money is. After getting a judgment, they can use the court to force you to sit for a debtor’s examination and answer questions under oath about every bank account, income source, piece of real estate, vehicle, insurance policy, investment, and recent transfer of property. Hiding assets during this process is illegal and easy to catch through financial records.
Skipping the examination makes things worse. A court can hold you in contempt for failing to appear at a properly served examination, which can bring fines and a bench warrant for your arrest. The examination itself doesn’t take money from you. It just hands the creditor a map to everything they can go after.
How Long the Judgment Follows You
Default judgments don’t expire quickly. A civil money judgment stays enforceable for 5 to 20 years depending on the state, and in most states a creditor can renew it before it lapses. Some jurisdictions require a motion; others require a new lawsuit on the judgment itself. Either way, a creditor with a sizable judgment has every reason to keep it alive. Liens on real property often run on their own timeline, sometimes shorter than the judgment, but those too can usually be renewed. Waiting it out is rarely a workable strategy.
Can You Undo a Default Judgment?
Yes, but the bar is high and the window is short. You file a motion asking the court to set the judgment aside, and you need a legally recognized reason.2Legal Information Institute (LII) / Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 55 – Default; Default Judgment
The strongest ground is improper service. If you were never actually served, say because the process server left documents at the wrong address or claimed a delivery that didn’t happen, the judgment may be void from the start. Courts take service rules seriously because the whole system depends on defendants getting notice.
The other recognized ground is excusable neglect: you knew about the lawsuit but had a legitimate reason for missing the deadline, like a serious medical emergency, military deployment, or a natural disaster. “I didn’t think it was important” doesn’t qualify. Courts separate understandable circumstances from deliberate avoidance.
Timing is unforgiving. Under federal rules, a motion based on excusable neglect must be filed within one year of the judgment. State deadlines vary but tend to be similarly strict. You also have to show the court you have a viable defense to the original lawsuit, so that reopening the case isn’t pointless. Common defenses include the statute of limitations having run before the plaintiff filed, mistaken identity, a dispute over the amount, or evidence the debt was already paid.8Legal Information Institute (LII) / Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 60 – Relief from a Judgment or Order Most people who try to undo a default miss the deadline before they realize how bad things have gotten.
Can Bankruptcy Erase It?
Often, yes. A standard judgment for unpaid credit card debt, medical bills, or a breach of contract is generally dischargeable in Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy, meaning the obligation is wiped out and the creditor can no longer collect.
Certain categories of debt survive bankruptcy regardless of the judgment:
- Fraud-based debts, where the underlying claim involved false representations or actual fraud.
- Judgments for willful and malicious injury to a person or their property.
- Debts from embezzlement or breach of a fiduciary duty.
- Judgments for death or personal injury caused by drunk driving.
To keep one of these alive through bankruptcy, the creditor usually has to file a separate action within the bankruptcy case arguing the debt falls into a protected category.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 523 – Exceptions to Discharge If they don’t, or the debt doesn’t fit, the judgment gets discharged. Bankruptcy carries its own serious consequences for your credit and finances, but for someone facing a large judgment they genuinely cannot pay, it can be the most practical path.
What to Do Instead
File a written response, called an Answer, with the court before the deadline on your summons. Everything above happens because someone skipped this step. Even a basic Answer filed on time preserves your rights and forces the plaintiff to prove their case.
In the Answer, you go through each numbered paragraph of the complaint and state whether you admit it, deny it, or lack enough information to know. Anything you don’t respond to is treated as admitted, so leaving paragraphs blank works against you.10Legal Information Institute (LII) / Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 8 – General Rules of Pleading When in doubt, deny or claim insufficient knowledge rather than stay silent.
The Answer is also where you raise affirmative defenses, which are legal arguments that defeat the claim even if the plaintiff’s facts are true. The most common one in debt cases is the statute of limitations: if the creditor waited too long to sue, the claim may be time-barred. Prior payment, accord and satisfaction, fraud, and waiver are others. If you have claims of your own arising from the same dispute, raise them as counterclaims in the Answer. Failing to raise a counterclaim tied to the same facts can permanently forfeit it.
Get a lawyer involved as soon as you can. A lawyer can evaluate whether the claims have merit, spot defenses you’d miss, and make sure the Answer is filed correctly and on time. Many attorneys offer free or low-cost initial consultations for people who’ve been sued, and legal aid organizations represent people who qualify by income. The cost of legal help now is almost always less than the cost of a default judgment that follows you for the next decade.