albinobat

I was served with a summons today. Only I wasn't home so the guy gave it to my girlfriend (who lives with me). I thought they can only give it to you or a RELATIVE over the age of 15 living with you. It says something to the effect of that on the paperwork and last time he tried to serve me he told my aunt that as well (she lives next door). I live in Missouri and this is about a credit card. Was I legally served?Is this against the privacy act (can't discuss a debit with anyone but you)What should I do?

Also. I found a website that sends you info and software to help you file motions and stuff to help you fight this kind of thing. Any advice on if I should buy this?

Hello, I'm getting married in April and have heard a million times about people getting burned when their florist/hairstylist/insert person here doesn't do as agreed.

I want to have some kind of contract that each of us signs that states our expectations of each other, what amount of money is to be exchanged, and all that good stuff.

Is there any kind of website that lays out contracts in a simple way that I could print and create?

Bonus points for being free, but obviously if I have to pay then it's worth it since these days weddings cost so much that having that in hand is worth it.

thanks,

~Marie

I'm kind of stressed out about this, so forgive me in advance if this post is all over the place.

I have a son who was born in the middle of May ('09). I was living with my dad at the time, and moved out on May 30th. I've been living with my baby daddy, boyfriend, and mother since then.
My father called yesterday and said that he was going to claim my son on his taxes because he took care of me for six months. At first, I thought he couldn't legally do that. But then my boyfriend's father said that if I was living with him for six months of the calendar year (meaning starting in January, I guess?) and I gave birth while I was living there, that he could make a case.
So my first question is, what exact dates does "six months of the calendar year" range from? January 1st to June 30th? Is that part even true?
And secondly, what are my options here, if I even have any?

For the record, my son and I live in Florida.
My dad moved to Tennessee right around the time I left his house. And I lived with him (here in FL) from Dec. 10th to May 30th.

Thanks for any advice/insight in advance.

For those of you who are looking for answers to your legal questions in Louisiana, there is a website you can consult. Check this out: Louisiana Legal Help.

Since the Louisiana system is based on civil law rather than common law, this site can be very helpful in navigating it.

I just thought I'd share.

Not sure what I can do if anything or if I just need to suck it up and deal with it.....

The issue is the upstairs neighbor. All throughout the day I have to put up with constant banging, stomping, kids jumping off furniture, running down the hallway, slamming into walls etc. At least that what I assume theyre doing, whatever it is Im at my wits end. My husband has already spoken to them once before at 9pm when we were trying to go to bed and it sounded like the kids were jumping off the bed (which is directly above our room, the layouts are identical). The noise stopped but is still an ongoing issue. Youd think that if you live above someone you wouldnt let you kids stomp on the floor and jump off furniture, nor would you practice your dance routines (he said they were dancers).

The thing is, we do not have the same landlord so I dont even know who to complain to or if I even can, I know that if it was a loud radio or screaming I could call the police but I guess this would be considered "everyday living" noise? Please tell me there is something I can do because Im actually getting headaches from all the booming and banging.

Thanks in advance.

My good friend has sole custody of her child, the father has visitation rights. He is very bitter over this and has threatened recently to call CPS and falsely accuse her of abuse/neglect. She is afraid that if he calls CPS they will show up at her door and take her kids while they complete a investigation. Is this the case? Also, her daughter has a very rare medical condition that causes easy bruising. She has a letter from her pediatrician and blood specialist that state this. Will CPS still think this is child abuse or is the letter enough proof.

This is somewhat OT, so if you feel it needs to be deleted let me know. I'm hoping someone here will have some input. My husband is a new lawyer, just graduated in may, bar in july, found out he passed in October and started his first job 11/2. For Christmas, I'd like to get him a PDA and load it with legal resources. I think that would be a good, lawyery-tool and he would have fun with it. But I did a really good of being in denial when he was in law school, and have managed to make myself completely clueless about what kind of resources he could need or want on a PDA.

Any input would be sincerely appreciated.

I was wondering in what conditions can the gvt use one's personal data without prior consent. In more detail, can someone call your insurance company and ask if you have car insurance with them?
They never asked for consent, they have been provided with insurance proof, but they called the company anyway, without mentioning it to the employee. How legal is this?
Thank you

So when we signed the lease for this apartment (a year ago today actually) the person we rented through (a second party company that finds apartments for you) told us that our electricity was included in the cost of rent and the only utility we had to pay was gas. Cool for us, right? Wrong. Over the last year we never received a single bill or notice or anything from the electric company. We assumed it was being paid by the landlord, and since we never spoke to our neighbors, we assumed it was the same for everyone in the building.

Yesterday the electricity got turned off. Everyone else's in the building was fine so we talked to the landlord who told us that "No, you needed to switch the electric into your name when you moved in." Nobody EVER told us to do this, including the electric company. She also told us the electricity gets turned off when the bill reaches $500 and remains unpaid. We attempted to call into customer service earlier in the day, but since we didn't have an account number, we couldn't speak with anyone. So. Now we have no electricity (save for the building's outlet in the hallway that we have plugged an extension cord into) and that means no fan to run our furnace. In Chicago. In December. We aren't going to be able to speak with anybody until Monday because the electric company (of course) has nobody in the offices on the weekend, and even if we could, we don't have any money to pull out of our asses. If we pay the entire bill when we get paid on Friday we are going to be late with rent because we'll not be working because of Christmas and our checks won't be big enough.

I'm just trying to figure out a way that this doesn't end badly and wondering if this is even okay? The person I did talk to on the phone for the electric company told me that they usually send out "Who's Using?" notices to the address when they don't know who's consuming the power. We never received ANYTHING from anybody regarding the electricity. That's why we kept on assuming that, as we were told, it was paid for.

Any thoughts? I am so stressed out right now I can't sleep and I keep bursting into tears. I just need some advice.


x-posted

According to my lease my landlord has 24 hours to plow my parking lot. It snowed all night from the 8th going into the 9th and the lot still hasn't been plowed. It has now melted a bit and frozen and been driven over, so it's one solid sheet of ice. I needed to throw out the trash this evening and I couldn't even safely get across the lot, I fell twice, landing pretty hard each time.

I've called the landlord/property manager twice today and once yesterday and it's still not plowed we can't get one of our vehicles out of the show.

How do I get my landlord to obey the lease?

Due to financial difficulty after my divorce, I recently moved from Missouri to Tennessee. I desperately need to file bankruptcy, but I can't file in Tennessee for 6 months. Is it possible for me to file in Missouri?

Does anyone have any knowledge on the procedure for evicting a tenant with an active (not month-to-month) lease agreement with the seller of a property? In this case, the buyer purchased the home knowing it was occupied by a tenant, but failed to stipulate the seller would be responsible for removal and/or the property was to be delivered vacant. Must the buyer honor the lease between the tenant and seller? Can the tenant only be removed if they have violated the lease? Also assume the seller did not stipulate the buyer must honor any lease in place at the time of sale.

You'd think this would be somewhat of a common occurance, yet Google and Yahoo have failed me for two days now. State-specific laws for any state are fine, I'm really just looking for a start point.

Edit: I realize the state matters, especially when discussing things like tenancy law, but this is not for one specific state. I'm trying to develop a general idea of the procedure, and then I'll figure out state-specific laws from there.

Is it illegal to misrepresent yourself in a manner not directly related to what you're selling? For example, if you make a pretend family (with actors/co-workers as "family") to make your product or service seem like it was picked by someone with a loving family.
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When is the line crossed from making yourself more charismatic/appealing through lies to breaking the law?

Hi, first time poster. Recently my cousin (a repo-agent) discovered the location of my father's truck that was stolen 7 years ago. It's a 1999 Chevy flatbed with about 100 thousand miles. There are some unusual circumstances... My dad died 6 months after the vehicle was stolen (when i was 17) and no one filed a stolen vehicle report (at least that I can find) of any kind. The title ws never found after my father died and my family was unsure about how to find the vehicle.
However, the vehicle has certainly been located. the VIN number matches the number that I was able to retrieve from county records of my dad's previous ownership of the vehicle. The VIN is still the same as it was when my dad owned it and according to carfax.com, the truck is still being driven and is registered here in my city. It appears that my dad's signature was forged when the truck changed hands 2 years after my dad's death. The police say they can't do anything and they are advising me to get a lawyer and file a civil case. At present I need to find the names of the people who have had their names on the title and I'm wondering what to do to obtain any further information on order to retrieve the truck.
My dad was going to insure the truck the day it was stolen, which was 2 days after he purchased it.

How do I reclaim this truck? I'm willing to do whatever it takes.

Anyone know the answer to this question offhand?

If you have an LLC with, say, three partners, and you wanted the LLC to have equity held back for future partners or incentive plans for employees (or things like that), can you say, "each partner has a 25% equity stake and the company has a 25% equity stake for usage," or must you assign 100% to the partners and, instead, say, "Each partner has a 33% equity stake and will have to use their equity in any future offering?"

I can't seem to find a definitive answer.

Can anyone give me any information about expungement in NYS? (how to get one, what shows on your record after, what you have to put on employment applications).

Not a question, but an answer here.

While I was Googling around, I found a presentation which gives a nice overview of the Canadian legal system. It can be found here. The same user also has presentations available for the American and Indian legal systems. They're also downloadable if you register for a Slideshow account, which is free.

Just thought it was interesting and wanted to share.

Could anyone please explain the more detailed differences between an answer and an answer letter? I understand the basic differences between the two, but I'm not really sure why someone would choose to draft an answer letter instead of an answer. Is there really a reason to do it, or is it just a method used by people who don't have representation and don't know how to file a formal answer? Are there any guidelines for answer letters (do they need a caption at the top, etc?), or can you really draft a simple letter addressed to the judge and submit that as your "formal" answer?

Thank you for any insight.

ETA: For the purpose of my question, I'm assuming an "answer letter" is something you would submit to the court in lieu of filing a proper, formal answer to a complaint. Someone mentioned that to them, an answer letter is correspondence they would send pre-litigation to persuade the claimant not to pursue the matter in court. Is this what most people believe an answer letter to be? If so, I may be going down the wrong path here in a quest for an answer.

I should mention I'm not looking for this information for my own purpose. I maintain a sort of self-help community where a group of people asked me to explain answers vs. answer letters and how to "file" an answer letter, but I've found nothing online or off that even defines what an answer letter would be. The only hits on Google I found were from individuals who were representing themselves that were requesting either a sample answer letter (which doesn't exist, or at least I haven't found one, as I thought that would be a good starting point) or for help with how to submit the letter, none of which had informative answers. I'm in the same camp that thinks if you are going to forego representation, at the very least, you should do some research and learn how to correctly file a proper answer. But I'm looking for more on why someone would choose to submit an answer letter instead, what it would contain, how you would submit, that kind of thing. If anyone could point me to a resource (online or offline, books are fine) I would sincerely appreciate it!

Hello. Two questions, obviously I'm not expecting exact answers but anything would be helpful.

First, I was served with papers for a loan that is not in my name. The loan is under someone elses name who has the same exact name as myself. I gave the notice to my Brother because it was his loan in the first place and he said he would handle it. Well, 4 months later the county I live in sued ME because they didnt match socials security numbers and just searched the name, which we both share. Weird I know. I recently went to a lawyer and he said he would set up a court date to ask the original loan lenders to bring the original loan document to prove the loan is NOT in my name by matching socials. He however has not done so. I have the receipt that shows I paid for his services on 9/18/2009. I recently called him to see how it was going and he said 1) he tried to find a loophole but I'm in neglect because I waited too long to file and he had to hire someone else to help him so he may be charging me more and 2) hes been out town so he hasn't had time.

Like, he told me upfront the cost, why is it my fault he didn't know what he needed to do and had to hire someone else? He did not tell me he was hiring someone else to help him. Do I have to pay for the extra fees when he never asked me? I'd just rather pay off the debt which is $3,600 instead of paying him the $2000 to remove it if hes going to make me pay him more. Also, him going out of town has nothing to do with me and it should not take him 2.5 months to send a letter to the court asking for a court date.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should do? I think I'm going to set an appointment with him on Tuesday to tell him I dont think it should be taking this long for him to simply mail out a letter. Should I be looking into legal action againest him for leaving me hanging and telling me its my fault he had to hire more people and may even raise my price without my knowledge? Anything would be greatly GREATLY appreciated. I will even send you cookies! :) Good day.

I'm in Oklahoma. We moved in and signed a 12 month lease on our house in July. Everything has been great with the house but recently the neighborhood has become quite scary. There's been twice I've had to call 911, about 2 weeks ago because there were about 10 gun shots that sounded as if they had been fired right outside the house at 2 in the morning and then this evening I had to because our neighbor came over to ask us if we had anyone in the backyard because her husband had come out to smoke and saw a guy on the side of the house peering into the windows. He took off and the cops at this point haven't been able to find anyone so who knows what they were doing. Other than myself having to call the police there's also been a store robbed less than 3 blocks away, a body found in an apartment complex across the road after they had been set on fire.

What concerns me is I have a 3 year old, a 2 year old, and a 10 month old and now I'm really worrying about their safety as well as the safety of my husband and myself. We've talked about breaking the lease to find a safer area to live in, I will admit the neighborhood we live in isn't the greatest but we haven't had any problems since we moved in until the last month.

I'm just curious as to whether or not if we did decide it would be better to move if we had any legal standing to do so as far as our lease is concerned. We haven't talked to the landlord yet so who knows? He may be completely ok with it but just in case he's not I'd like to know if we had any ground to stand on.

Thanks so much in advance.