 This presentation is part of the People's Law School series. It is a series presented by the Vermont Attorney General's Office, the Association of Africans Living in Vermont. The Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, the Vermont Institute for Community and International Involvement, the Caroline Fund with the support of the ACLU of Vermont. We have really an excellent panel tonight of people who really know Small Claims Court. Gene Murray is a staff attorney at Vermont Legal Aid and has been since 1998. For the past 13 years, a significant part of her practice has been devoted to the defense of debt collection, a lot of which occurs in Small Claims Court. Tom Nuovo is an attorney with Bauer-Gravel Farnham LOP, who focuses mostly on trial work in the courts. He has served as an acting Small Claims Court judge in numerous counties for over 12 years and is known as, I can tell you, as someone who protects people's rights and has done significant litigation on his own to protect people's rights. We looked at the panel, we said, we need a non-lawyer here and we are really pleased to have Lisa Jensen, who's the Assistant Director of the Consumer Assistance Program at UVM, a joint effort of UVM and the Attorney General's Office. Lisa has a long career in helping individual Vermonters prior to working at CAP, she spent 11 years with the Working Bridges Employer Collaborative, which serves employers who use the workplace as a platform to help get employees stable and to grow employment. She's also held management positions in Boston and Vermont. So we are going to begin. This is going to be a question and answer format. We decided because of the deep knowledge of the panelists that going with a script or a deep PowerPoint was not going to be and get all the information that we could get out of these people, these wonderful people. So first we'll start off. Where do courts fit in with government? There are three branches of government. On the left there, you'll see the legislature. The legislature passes the laws, passes the budgets. On the bottom is the Pavilion Building where the governor's office is. The executive branch enforces the laws and runs agencies. And what governments do. And when you think of government, you generally will think of someone from the executive branch. That's the big part of government in terms of personnel. And on the right, we have a picture of the Vermont Supreme Court. The court is the third branch of government and it's where people go and where everyone goes to enforce rights and to protect disputes. There are two kinds of courts. There are criminal courts and on the left you see the Costello Courthouse and the Perry handcuffs and that's where criminal cases occur. On the right you see the Chittenden Superior Court, which is the civil court. And that's where the small claims court and that resolves disputes in many areas civilly and it also houses the small claims court. So first question, I think this will go to the panelists. Where do I find out what the law is as applies to me? So I've got a problem. How do I find out what the law is? Tom or Gene? I'm sure you want me to start with that. I mean, so first if you don't have access to an attorney, you can find questions online. And Google is actually a good way to get some basic answers. All the statutes from the legislature are online as well as you can find them there. But the best way, of course, is through consumer groups as well and places like Legal Aid can also provide people who have need assistance as well, which Gene I think can talk about. Gene, do you want to add anything to that? Yeah, the vtlawhelp.org is Legal Aid's website and it covers a lot of different things. If you were to go there and look at money and debt, you would be taken to all sorts of information and even an interactive program that would help you figure out what to write down in small claims court. And Ted referred to where are actually the laws? If you want to find them online, the way I do is I type in Vermont legislature and then the legislatures page comes up and it says Vermont laws and I click on that and that'll take you to Vermont statutes online and it's completely free to do that and you can see what the actual law says. So that's one place I would try. So the first step and if you have a problem is to try to figure out what the law is that might apply and there are various resources. The consumer assistance program is certainly one that's 1-800-649-2424 and there's an online complaint form. Vermont Legal Aid and Vermont Law Help are two great areas. The Vermont Bar Association also has a program where for $25 you can talk to a lawyer for half an hour. So there are some great resources. So how do courts work? And I'll begin with courts operate with strict rules. The deadlines are really strict. They operate with clarity of communications and for instance in most instances and certainly small claims court everything that anybody cert files of the court also has to get served on the other side. So everybody knows what's going on and they operate by rules and the rules are basically the laws. There are procedural rules and then the laws but within those rules judges have a lot of discretion. So the idea is to play by the rules and appeal to the judge's discretion. Anybody want to add anything to that? Well, I'll start with just, you know, the way I see the rules that the courts have set out is really the goal is to find out what the truth is. And small claims is probably the best place to do that because the rules and small claims court are fairly simple, which is that the judge can basically look at anything which a reasonable person would rely upon in their daily lives to reach a decision. It doesn't mean that I can take a, you know, a judge can take a letter from a friend saying this is what my opinion is or facts are. But a doctor's note detailing, you know, receipts or an estimate that you might have gotten from a contractor as to what it might cost to repair something. So the goal of the courts is to have rules, but in order to, the main goal is to try to find the truth. And that's what the very first rule of procedure is geared to do and so that says and emphasizes that that is the purpose of those rules. Gene, do you have anything to add? No, I think Tom is absolutely right. When you talk, first of all, Ted, you've been talking about procedural rules, which is getting the paperwork right. And we're going to talk more about that later, getting the paperwork right and paying attention to deadlines. And then once you get into court, being able to tell your side of the story. So a lot of times people say, I don't want to go to court. I don't have any proof. And I said, well, you have your own personal knowledge of things that you saw and felt and heard. And if the person that you're, you know, trying to, person that you're suing said something to you about the case, you're entitled to repeat what that person said back to the judge. You can't, I don't want to get too deep into hearsay rules, but that's not hearsay. So you can always say what you saw, felt, and heard. And you can say what the other party said to you. So those are important ways of showing the court what your case is about. And of course, in everyday life, we have, we tend to have a lot of corroborating evidence that accumulates, especially now we carry cell phones. So what is small claims court? Tom, you want to answer that? Sure. So small claims court is a court of limited jurisdiction. The first thing you have to understand about small claims court is it can only deal with money. Other courts can issue other kinds of judgments and orders. But in small claims court, a judge's only power is to listen to the dispute and then resolve it. And if there's a monetary demand to resolve that monetary issue. So they, you know, it's a it it doesn't have a lot of it doesn't have a lot of technical file and technical work in it. There are no, you can't file a bunch of, you know, in other places, you can file things with the court asking the court to do this or do that. And you have to respond within a certain amount of time and small claims court. All you do is you file an answer, a file complaint. Sorry, that and we'll talk about that later and answer. And then the judge hears it as long as it's a matter within that court's jurisdiction, it will there are a few things that aren't. But most disputes between people if they're under $5,000 can be heard by the small claims court. And I think you hit on this question slightly, how is small claims court different than other courts? Small claims court is set up to be a really simple court in terms of procedures and to eliminate the forms and their numerous requirements. So whether it was exist as generally a court that doesn't have lawyers in it. And that's why we are so lucky to have Tom and Jean here because lawyers don't go to small claims court, generally, unless they're representing a credit card company or debtor because the amounts of money are too small and it's just not set up for lawyers. So small claims court is very different than other courts, but it still operates under those general principles that we've been talking about a basic rules and trying to get to the truth through a relatively quick and formal proceeding with relatively few rules. So what can you get in small claims court? Jean, why don't you talk about that? One of the you would go to small claims court because you believe someone else owes you money and what you can get if you prove to the court that someone else owes you money is money and that's it. You can't get anything else but money and the maximum amount of money that you can get is five thousand dollars. Yep. So how do I even if you have a claim? Even if you think the person owes you six thousand or more money and you go to the small claims court, even though you may prove that that person owes you six thousand dollars, the maximum amount that judge can give you is five. And so if you if you have a bigger dispute, sometimes you you want to you might decide that you'll go to small claims court and and and not raise a dispute over every all the money they owe just because you don't want to deal with the cost of going to a different court. So how do I prepare a case for a small claims court? And I'm going to start off with this just because we see I work in the consumer assistance program. We get about twelve thousand calls a year and we get about two thousand or so complaints. And so we often have complaints where somebody states fairly clearly what the problem is. And the first thing I I do and I've probably become infamous is I want to see the documents. Well, there are no documents. Well, usually there are documents. There's text messages, there's emails. You hope there's something in writing about what the dispute was about if they bought a car. You hope they have a written contract or something. But you're always looking for writings. And the reason you do that is because they're basically an unbiased third party that you can look to to try to understand the facts. And the facts may be the documents may be very different from the account of the consumer is, which may make things very difficult. It may mean that the consumer was defrauded or may mean the consumer doesn't really understand what was going on. But so the first place I do the case for small for any case is to try to get all the materials that I can and then to try to put them in chronological order so I can understand the sequence of things because there's a cause and effect relationship for most things. Lawyers don't believe in coincidences of the famous things lawyers say. And the reason is we think there's a cause and effect. The documents can be really helpful to understand the case. And the other thing is there may be other witnesses. You have a mechanic, maybe your car didn't get fixed properly and you brought it to another mechanic. Mechanics said, well, that job was just not done right. Well, that mechanic will be a good source of information. There may be an estimate. So there's all sorts of things that happen in real life and that you don't think of at the time that you can use to help prove your case in small claims court. Anyway, want to add anything to that? I would just add to that, Ted, speaking about the consumer assistance program. So with an unresolved matter, consumers may start with our office first and participate in our letter mediation service. And that, as you know, that starts with a complaint form. And as you said, hopefully some supporting documentation. So if we're unsuccessful in the letter mediation program and the consumer does want to pursue it further, then as we do educate folks about small claims court and their documents should be, they should be, you know, have everything repaired, ready to go and ready to fill out that that first form with small claims court. So the next question is, how do I start a case? And I would say the first thing we'll back to start a case is you want to research everything. You want to gather everything. You want to figure out what the law is, how the law might be applied to you. And if you can get a third party, like the consumer assistance program to look at it, that's a great benefit because often people will see things that you won't see. And there may be issues that you haven't spotted that are actually more significant than the one that you did spot. Um, so, Jean or Tom, you want to add to that? Sure. I'll add one thing to that. Most there's two sort of types of of law which we deal with in in in the small claims court. One is what we call the common law and one is what we call statutory law. And the reason I bring that up is because I know we did talk about finding the law in in in the statutes. But not all the law that you rely upon is in the statutes. For example, contract law, there aren't there may be statutes about specific types of contracts like a deal with a if you if you buy a home, there might be laws and statutes about that or if you rent an apartment, there are renter, there are laws about what people may do for renters. But if you just enter into a contract with someone to to do a favor, do a favor for you, that may be a law of contract. And that may not be there may not be a statute which covers your situation. So common law is is common is referred to sort of how we expect each other to deal with our our everyday solutions. So just because you can't find a statute or a rule that specifically applies to you doesn't mean you don't have a basis for your your dispute. And so when you're filling out, you know, certainly if there's a statute that applies, it may provide you with extra damages. It might provide you with it might provide other things like pay for an attorney if you you win the case. So there are other there are benefits that some of the statutes provide to consumers and others. But a lot of times your dispute is just going to be a dispute between whether or not that person treated you right. And and and in the way that they should have in the way that the two of you agreed to. And and and that is not a statutory rule. That is, you know, what we refer to as a common law. And we probably should have mentioned when I talked about courts, we live in a common law system and what's written in the statute doesn't mean much until the courts construe what's in the statute, basically there is a code system. Go ahead, Jean. I guess I would want to say and I think I Tom is right, even though it's great to figure out if there is a specific law that applies to your case, especially in small claims court, common sense sort of prevails. I I want to sue Tom because I paid Tom two hundred and fifty dollars to paint my wall and he's got my two hundred and fifty dollars and he hasn't painted my wall. So I want my two hundred and fifty dollars back. I mean, a very common sense way of understanding that somebody didn't do something or did do something that hurt you. Tom. I don't know. I'm trying to think of a of a tort case. Donuts in your driveway and tour up all your the flowers that you just planted. Yeah, flowers cost me, you know, I just invested one hundred and fifty bucks at the garden store for those flowers. And he just did donuts in my driveway and destroyed all my flowers. So he's liable to me for one hundred and fifty bucks for destroying my flower. So that if you can say what the facts are that would convince a court to believe that the other person owes you money, you're at a really good start. It'll be up to the judge to say, hey, I don't know if there's a well in the law, it's called a theory of recovery for what you're asking. But for the most part, the judge will in small claims court, Ted, you ask what's different about small claims in TV shows and lawyer shows. The the plaintiff's lawyer asks the questions and then the defendant's lawyer asked the questions in small claims court in Vermont, the judge asks the questions and the judge's job is to elicit information that would help the case or the proper questions to ask if the judge thinks that the that the plaintiff is doesn't have a theory of law to help them out. So. And and and that's why your your complaint is is is important. This complaint is what you're going to write is basically it doesn't have to be anything formal, just this is why I think I mowed money and and what they did. And then the judge is going to see that before you come into the courtroom. And if they think, you know what, I think there's a statute that controls this, they'll go look at it. And and, for example, the painting scenario, there is a statute that talks about a contractor's duty to to fulfill a painting contract if they don't. Then there are some extra penalties that a judge could award. So there are all sorts of, you know, as coming into small claims court, not only is the judge going to sort of ask a lot of questions, but they they they also try. It is their job to try to know what laws apply to the to the to the issues that you're there and and to make sure that that when they are helping these people who are not lawyers, that they they make sure that they get the result that they're entitled to based under the law. So I put in the panel, I hope people can see it, what it cost to start a small claims case and it's $90 if it's between a thousand and five thousand dollars and service by a sheriff, which we'll get into how service goes maybe about a hundred dollars, a subpoena is thirty dollars. And then there are post-judgment materials. So it's it's that's relatively cheap. And you can see and here's addresses for the forms for the people who signed on to Zoom, we will send you the forms. I don't have great confidence now if I click on them, that they will open into the desktop that I've shared. So but I'm going to try it. And so we get to the next excuse me, Ted. Yeah, we have a question. Great. What if somebody does not have the financial means to pay the fees? Great question. So for everybody who wants access to the courts, but they have a very low income, there is a fee waiver form. It's called an application for fee waiver in Informapoparis. Right, except that it's literally if you're looking for it on the courts form menu, it's called application for fee waiver. And so where you find that is in Vermont, judiciary.org, and you go to forms. It's actually not in the small claims forms. It's in the tab of miscellaneous forms. And there's an application for fee waiver. And you have to be fairly low income. The form assumes it's got a standard. If your income is below the standard, the clerk will automatically allow your application for fee waiver. But if your income is above that, you could make the case. You could explain all the reasons that you need to have the fee waiver or you're going to have to go without the necessities of life if you had to pay for it yourself. So in other words, if your budget is so tight that in order to afford a $65 filing fee, you'd go without food that week. You should tell that put that on the form and ask the court to approve it. So I would say, too, is if you're successful in your claim and you had to pay the fee, part of your recovery above the $5,000 is the $90 that you paid. So in you can get not only can you get five thousand up to five thousand dollars money owed to you, but the court will also award you the the the filing fee, make the other side pay your filing fee if you win your case. OK, so we get to the next question. How do I fill out the complaint? Jean, you want to take that one? Um, yeah, sure. So, Ted, you have the wrong thing up there. No, um, yeah, that's what I wanted to say. Yeah, in in small claims court, that you use a form, which is better than a blank piece of paper because it kind of guides guides you around. There you go. It guides you around and makes sure that you give the court all the information. So one of the most important things to give the court is a way to get a hold of you. And these days, the court is doing a lot of things by email. Is there a yep, they have an email address on the form now. So they're not just only writing to you in the mail. They may be emailing you about certain things and having a good phone number is also a really good thing. Because sometimes this is Vermont, something could be scheduled for a hearing and it could snow and they could say, OK, we're we're not nobody got to the courthouse today. We're not having court today and then the court will call you. So then you put down how much money you want, which is kind of maybe you think about that backwards. Like, I want to say the reasons for what I want. But you do need to do a little thinking ahead of time and say, what am I owed? And yeah, I don't know what goes right. Sorry. OK. And so then on that, this is what you're going to claim. Let's say you have been owed this for a while and they know they owe you. You had an agreement and they were supposed to pay you money. And the agreement included an interest rate if they didn't pay you so you could calculate the interest and put it right there and the court costs of what you paid and then you total it. So that's your total claim. Now, one of the most important things about figuring out how to get to small claims court is where do you find the defendant? Because you need a good address and contact information for the defendant. If you have a defendant that you can't find, the court's not going to find them for you. You you have to find them and you have to have a good address and you put it on the complaint. Can you you can't actually scroll up for the rest of the complaint? Can you can you down? I was I think I have to I took the second section out, unfortunately, but I'll put it on the you can go to the browser and do it. Well, anyway, there's sort of a narrative part at the bottom. And then you it's a bunch of blank lines. There you explain. There you go. Briefly explain your complaint. And so you put the reasons why you think the other person owes you money. And it's sort of like an essay at school two weeks ago. And if you could put the date down, that's the best. The defendant. You can call him the defendant or you can call him by the name, Joe. Took my two hundred and fifty dollars and ran away. There isn't any reason why Joe should keep that two hundred and fifty dollars. I want the court to give me a judgment for two hundred and fifty dollars because Joe is wrongfully holding my money. So that's you write your story in that spot and you sign it. So that's the complaint. And then. What you do with the complaint, I'm going to jump ahead a little bit for you. Is to. Send it with what if you have documents that may prove it or an IOU from Joe or whatever you want to attach, you attach that. You you send the complaint and the summons into the court. The clerk puts the docket number on the summons and signs it and then sends it back to you, right? So that she sends back to you. The summons and then you take the summons and complaint and you put it in the mail to the defendant. That that's how it works in small claims. You need to have a signed docket number summons from the clerk. And then when you get that back from the clerk, you put it in the mail to the defendant. I should mention that Vermont has 14 counties and we have courts in all 14 counties. So you you mail it or you go to the court where you live ordinarily. You can also do it where the defendant lives, but usually you do it in county where you live. And the clerks are very, very helpful on procedure. They will not be helpful to you on the facts of the case. And there they will avoid that because that's not their job. But you can use other resources we've talked about to help you on the facts. And and there is the link. The Secretary of State has very good information on businesses and what their addresses are if you don't have a good address. So I think you've already answered that question. So only thing I would add is that it is, you know, from from my perspective as a as a judge, it is helpful that if you have some really important document for the case, for example, like Jean said, the contract or an email from the person saying, yeah, I owe you two hundred and fifty dollars. I don't feel like giving it back to you or, you know, or other documents like that, which, you know, tend to support your claim or if it's a contract, you know, that you're you're arguing about what should have been done under it. It's very helpful if that document is actually attached because the judge then the judge only has a limited amount of time when you're actually in the courtroom. But most judges will read what's in the file beforehand and then so that they'll have at least some knowledge about the documents. So if you have some documents that are going to be important in your case, it is a good idea to attach them because it really is helpful to the judge to have been able to read them before they walk into the courtroom so they're not trying to pour through a 20 page lease to see whether or not, you know, to see what the lease says, which may end up being important to the case. Yeah, another thing about the complaint is if you're doing this without a lawyer and you're signing it, you're signing it, essentially saying this is this is the story I intend to prove. And it would be a bad it would your case wouldn't work out very well if you changed your story when you got in front of the judge. So you really want to think about what it is you believe to be true and write that down. And hopefully that stays consistent all the way through trial. So I explained that when you get the summons back from the court, you put this in an envelope along with the complaint and a copy of the attachments to the defendant. And so then what happens? The defendant can file an answer and file means they write out an answer form and we'll show you that in a minute. But the mechanics is they write out an answer and they send it to the court and they send it to you. Now, they have a certain amount of time that they have to do this. From the time they get it. There are all sorts of technical rules, but let's just say 30 days. They have 30 days to write back to the court. It is up to the plaintiff if they haven't heard from the defendant in that 30 days that they need to turn around and take the whole shebang, the summons that complaint the attachments and give it to the sheriff to serve. So the the plaintiff has to keep track of whether or not it's been served because it needs to be served within 60 days of the time that the clerk signed the summons, basically. Right. And you want to file a certificate of service, which is just another form with the court that you did serve it by mail because I think that they will dismiss the case. Won't they if it's not served within is it not that certificate isn't filed? Well, if it turns out 60 days have gone by and they don't have any indication that service has happened either with a certificate of service or with a return of service from a sheriff, they will dismiss the case. Right. So that's important to remember everything, everything you do that involves the other side has to get filed with the court. So everybody knows what's going on. So let's assume that the that the the defendant did not respond to the first effort by mail. And I would suggest that you send that by priority mail that will show whether or not the person received it. Certified mail almost never works if that requires them to sign a postcard and many people will never pick up certified mail. So priority mail will just give you a record and it's like five bucks as to whether it actually he actually got it. But if he didn't get it or he did get it and doesn't do anything, then as Joe just said, you have to get it served by a sheriff. And if the defendant, but now the next question is if the defendant has been properly served by the sheriff and more than 30 days have passed since the service, then you can move for a default judgment if there's been no answer filed. Right. Right. OK. And Ted, there's a question. Can you go back to that last slide? Sure. So when one says you should move for default judgment, is that another form to that and time frame for the the complaint to fill out? Well, yes. So if there's no answer filed, but the defendant is properly served and you filed the sheriff's return of service, remember, if they don't answer, it's got to be have been served by the sheriff because simply not answering to the mailing is not going to get you jurisdiction. So it's so it's been served by the sheriff. There's been no response in 30 days. Now you can move for a default judgment and say, hey, the guy had it. He didn't respond. Now I'm entitled to the judgment. And you would definitely want to do that. And that is another form. OK. But but but it's a form that can get your judgment. So it's kind of a really nice form. And so that's that would be the next thing to do. But I think at this point, we want to talk about an answer. Joan has done a gene. Joan, Jean has done a lot of work on creditors and credit card lawsuits. So it's really important to know what the answer is, because the sad story of small claims court is it's a court that was set up for small people and it's now used heavily by banks and creditors. And Jean has done research on how much it is being used by creditors. And you might share that with us. Yeah, so I. It's very interesting because you don't need a lawyer to be in small claims court and it's set up for people to proceed without lawyers. But right now, or at least the last time I looked, which was a year ago, I got the all of the data from the court and 70 percent of the cases in small claims court are now filed by people trying to collect credit card debt. And by people, I mean corporations trying to collect credit card debt. Sometimes the cases are brought in the name of the original creditor. And sometimes the cases are brought in the name of somebody who has bought the debt from the original creditor. So 70 percent of the cases are brought by lawyers for corporations because corporations actually can't represent themselves. Although in small claims, there's a there's an exception for that. So if you're a local business like an LLC or you can represent yourself if you are the principal of a corporation, but only in small claims. But otherwise you corporations have to be represented by lawyers because they're not actually people. So there are all these small claims forms are filled up by lawyers and then they're all typed out and they seem to be very official. And so then you got one of those in your mailbox and you say what in. Oops, we're losing a little bandwidth here. So so I'll finish the sentence. What in the world is going on? Jean, you might want to turn off your video for a minute if the bandwidth doesn't recover. So I could take it up from there. If you get very good until Jean can get back and join us. So as you'll see on the form of Ted, if you'd pull up the answer, that would be the answer form that would be great. I think it's down. So if you could you see on the form, they're basically four boxes that you can you can check. You can first start by checking, I agree. And in which case, if you agree, then the court is going to enter judgment for you. The against against you against you. Exactly. Oh, Jean, are you back? I'm back. All right. So go ahead. You can continue then. I'll let you. So one of the things about the small claims form answer is that first sentence is really loaded. It says, I agree that I owe the plaintiff the full amount claimed. So you saw how the plaintiff put together the full amount and the court may enter judgment against me. So that's a lot of information. So if you don't agree, if you have no idea who the plaintiff is, if it's somebody who has bought a debt and you've never made an agreement or done business with that person, then you don't agree that you owe the plaintiff because you don't know who that person is. The full amount claimed, you may have had a credit card and you may even recognize what's being described in the complaint. But you don't think you owe that much. So you don't agree that you owe the full amount claimed. If you even if you thought, all right, I I understand who the plaintiff is and it's probably the amount, are you actually wanting to agree that the court should enter a judgment against you before you ever get a chance to get in front of a judge? Because if you check that box, there will be no hearing. There will be no trial. There will just be some paperwork in the mail that says there's a judgment that entered against you. So that you got to be very cautious about that box. So the other thing that's mentioned there is Vermont's statutory rate of interest on judgments is 12 percent. That's one percent a month. That's a really high rate of interest. And so if you made a I'm going to try to do the math here. Let's say you have a judgment against you for a thousand dollars. That means in a year it is going to accrue interest of one hundred and twenty dollars, ten dollars a month, one percent a month. So if you agree to pay less than ten dollars a month. And in this box below, I request the court issue an installment judgment of five dollars every month. Then the interest accruing is going to be greater than your payments. And you are going to pay forever. And a judgment is good for eight years. So eight years is forever, but judgments can be renewed. So you could be signing up to pay forever. So you need to do the math if you really want there to be an installment payment, you have to make sure that the installment pays down the judgment. Counting in the interest that's accruing every month. So if you're not at all sure about that, check the box. I disagree and go to court and talk to the judge about it so that you understand exactly what's going to happen. Even if you think there's going to be a judgment entered against you, it may be worthwhile to have that hearing and meet with and meet with the creditor, the plaintiff, before judgment is entered. Right. I mean, I'm going to talk a little bit about the gamesmanship and volunteer. Many of these cases that are brought on credit card debt are not brought by the bank or the credit card company that originally had the debt and had issued the credit card, but by people who buy or companies that buy this on third party. So that basically they sell the obligation to a third party and the amount they may pay for the debt, let's say the debt's $1,000, they may pay $50 for that debt, and that would be actually fairly standard. And so now they're going to sue you for $1,000, even though they only paid $50 for the debt. So it makes sense to talk to somebody to pay the $25 to talk to Montbars Association lawyer, try to talk to a legal lawyer and try to understand what your defenses are, because there are often defenses. Among other things, the company suing you may not be able to prove that you owe the money and they are the amount that you owe or that they or that they own the money. Right. Or they owe the debt and they may have really no documents other than the fact that they bought the debt somewhere. So there may be a lot of defenses that are perfectly legitimate. You have a right to have your the case against you proven in court. And so the I disagree is a powerful thing. This this form I have on the back here, the standard civil course form, and I won't click on it, but basically it doesn't have any of these checkboxes. So you need to be really careful if you get sued in small claims court. And I mean, I would be making phone calls right away to a lawyer. Legal aid is a great resource. Vermont Law Help, the Vermont Bar Association and others to try to understand what your rights are. We had a case at the consumer assistance program. Jean mentioned about the interest rate. We had a case where at the rate that the court ordered the defendant to pay the debt was judgment creditor. They would pay the debt in 120 years. I'm betting the person isn't going to live that long. So it's really important to try to understand the rights. And, you know, we'll talk about this in a minute, but you have the ability also to negotiate. So never forget about negotiation. What one one thing I just want to also just emphasize is that in disagreeing, you know, you're you have to understand that that you may agree that you had that credit card and you may agree that you may never have paid off all of it, or there might be some parts of it that you haven't paid off. But you may disagree that you owe. And remember, it says the full amount claimed, OK, in that first degree box. So in disagreeing, you're not being dishonest. You're saying, I'm not sure. And if you're not sure, then you need to check the disagree box because it they need to show you that that that the amount they're claiming and they need to show the court the amount that they're claiming is what is actually owed. Yeah. And Ted, if I can move down to the next box. So the next box says you may want to close your video. I should be aware. You may want to stop your camera because your your sound isn't great. OK. That's better. We look at it. Can we look at the form again? Sure. So the box there says plaintiff in the court should be aware that some or all of my money may be exempt from collection of attached to signed disclosure of exempt income form. So you can check that box. But and the brief translation of what that means is I don't have enough money to pay this. I need all my money to take care of myself and my family. So you may not be able to pay a judgment. And if you aren't, you should check the box and fill out the form. But not being able to pay is not a defense. It's just it's just where you're at. You you can't pay even if a judgment enters. But the reason that you check it this early and give the plaintiff who 70 percent of the time is a lawyer who works for a corporation and you give the plaintiff your disclosure of exempt income. They may say, all right. Well, let's put you in hardship status and drop this case. And maybe if you hit the lottery or have an improved condition, I'll come back and sue you later because it may not be worth their time to pursue a case in court if they're not going to get anything from it because your income is exempt. I mean, that's up to them to decide, but it gives them something to think about. So we're going to go go go into the exemptions. By the time I just said, did you want to address the counterclaim issue or do we want to save that for later? No, I think this is a good time. OK, so you can also you know, you can also file a counterclaim. So, you know, somebody says, well, you owe me two hundred and fifty dollars because you promised I loaned you two hundred and fifty dollars and you promised to paint my my kitchen, but you never did. But you actually read, you know, receded their lawn and you did some other work for them and you asked them to pay you for that and they didn't. So you may have a counterclaim against them for other work that you did or. So, like, for example, a mechanic, you mechanic may be suing you because you you went to them to put in a new alternator in your car. Well, they charged you for a new alternator, but they put in a broken one and so you don't want to pay. But you then had to, you know, had some other damage with your car and had some extra towing costs and you want them to pay you for for having put in a bad alternator in your vehicle. So the counterclaim is, you know, just because the other person is suing you, you also have the right to say, no, no, no, they also owe me some money and I want that offset or I want that money back completely. Good. So so we'll we'll move on from the specific answer. But I hope we've at least created some red flags about those boxes. And if you do get sued in small claims court, you probably should talk to a lawyer and there are various programs and we're hopefully going to get more programs that will make that possible. So so so we're going back to you serve the complaint. You had a sheriff serve the complaint and it's now been more than 30 days since service and there's been no answer filed. So how do you move for a default judgment? And here's the form. Is it too small? Tom, I'm not sure I can make it bigger. But there is a form for everything. There's a form in small claims court for motion for default judgment. And who would like to talk about that? I can talk about it if you want. Sure. So basically, all you're doing here is you're filling out for the the the court and is a little smaller. See if I can make mine bigger on my screen here. All right. I might have to use my glass. So it's basically just says you're moving for for default and then, you know, who you are, the plaintiff and, you know, that you're over 18 years of age and that you the one thing you have to be able to do, you can't get a default judgment against somebody who's in the active military service. So there's an actual box here that states, you know, the best I know that the person is not in the military and is it is, you know, at least 18 years of old and not mentally incompetent. So you have to to state that to the court. There's actually a way online to to check and see if a person is in the military service. Then oh, yeah, they even have the form location right there. OK. So there's a little after David that goes along with this and there's a little box they even provide you with the the the address to to go to to check and type in the person's name. And if their name doesn't appear, you print out that page and you attach it to the the complaint, which shows that the answer the motion for default judgment. And then you include your damages. You know, how much did the person owe you? Well, in the case about the painting, it was two hundred and fifty dollars. And you want interest, you get one percent per month. So they gave it that it was last year that you gave them money and we're finally here a year later. So you get 12 percent interest on that two hundred and fifty dollars. So you calculate the interest and you write that in there. You paid nine. You know, you paid some money for the if it was, I guess, it would be sixty dollars if it was less than a thousand. So you put in the how much you paid for the filing fee. Then if you ended up having to have them serve by sheriff, you can put in a line item for how much it costs you to pay the sheriff to have them served. And then you add all that up and you put a total there. And then the and then. You might briefly explain again if you didn't feel like you explained it well enough in your complaint, the reason why the person owes the money. This is the in the motion in affidavit. And then you swear that all this information is true. And then the judge, the judge does not have to accept your default judgment, even though the other side didn't didn't appear, they can still if they have some questions. And a lot of times, you know, some of the judges will always call the credit card companies in. Some judges don't to prove the money owed. But the judge has the discretion to say, I think this case is either a little confusing or they don't quite understand the form. And the judge can say, I'm going to set a hearing anyways. And really what the judge is doing there is is is most of the time in a default judgment case is helping you as an individual to try to fill out this form correctly because there's something confusing about how you filled it out. And they just want to make sure they understand what the what the issue was and and why the amount of money is is is being asked for. And so most of the time, a judge will grant these if they're if they're properly filled out. But sometimes the court may say, you know what? I want to just I want to the judge just wants to talk to the individual under oath to make sure that they understand and they get everything that they're entitled to if they're entitled to it. So to talk about the default judgment motion for default judgment and affidavit, when you filled out the complaint and what you're saying there is allegations. This is what I'm going to come to court later to prove. When you're filling out and the affidavit, you're saying, I'm swearing this is true to the best of my knowledge. So there's a difference there. And the other thing that I wanted to note is for credit card companies, for default judgments, there is a pleading rule that they are supposed to attach, particularly that they own the debt. So if the person suing you for a credit card debt is not the person you had a credit card with, they are supposed to attach documentation that shows that they actually own the debt and the judge is supposed to look at it and figure out if it complies with the rule before granting the default judgment. And I have found that judges don't actually do this. So if you got a default judgment in the mail from a credit card collector that wasn't anybody you ever had a credit card with, you have 30 days to appeal. And the grounds for appeal would be that the credit card company didn't follow the rule and attach the documentation they needed to show that they own the debt. And there's probably more explanation I can do about that. When I say own the debt, let's say you had a Citibank card and you didn't pay it off, Citibank sold it to Midland Funding. You never made an agreement with Midland Funding. Midland Funding has simply bought the right to collect the card from Citibank. But Midland Funding doesn't have an individual piece of paper that shows that it bought your account. What they do is they get 20,000 accounts transferred to them at once. And they so they don't have the right documentation usually. And so but their file massive amounts of cases in court and default judgments are looked at in piles. And so the judge might miss it that they didn't attach the right documentation. So we've got a lot more to do, so we better move on. What if the defendant agrees to judgment? Want to handle that, Jane? Sure. So if the defendant agreed to judgment on the complaint, I agree that a judgment should enter against me. They're going to get a judgment in the mail. If the defendant said I disagree and they come to court and make a stipulation, which is just a fancy legal word for agreement, while at court, they they go tell the judge we're going to agree on this and the judge will turn the agreement into a judgment against the defendant. OK, so I wanted to go back. I just need to correct something Jean had said. Typically in in in in regular court, it's 30 days for a default judgment that you have to time to appeal it. But actually in in small claims court, you have all the way up until the first time they have a what's called a financial disclosure hearing for 90 days to ask that the default judgment be overturned. That's right, Tom. That's true for default judgments. That's yes, actually. So so if you have a hearing, then you only have 30 days to appeal the judgment. But if you got a default judgment against you, you have up to up to the first time you financial disclosure hearing is requested for 90 days from that date before it becomes final. So if that happens, that would be a perfect time to get copies and have a lawyer look at it to see if there are some issues. Yes. All right, I just wanted to make sure that's great. I really appreciate it. So now we're going to talk about, OK, you got the defendant served. You got you returned the first class by first class mail the answer or you had a sheriff's serve when they returned an answer by first class mail. Now you're going to have to get ready for trial. And as I say, at the consumer assistance program, I see all sorts of complaints without documentation. And I always want to get the documentation. And if it's convincing to me, I'm sure it's convincing to a judge when you can set out what actually happened on paper. So what I do in every situation that I see, I organize the documents. I try to get them in chronological order. I want to construct a chronology so that I can understand the case. And often the documents are different than what the person may say there that may be to their advantage or made of their disadvantage. But the documents are going to be a very powerful evidence in court to a judge unless the testimony is credible and overrules what the documents say. You have to print out everything. You can't bring your cell phone to court and say, look, I got a text message from you need to print out everything. If you don't know how to make a copy of a text message, get some help. You're usually are ways you can do a screenshot and print them out. Get three paper copies of all the documents that you plan to use. And lastly, if you can get a witness there is to my mind. And Tom, you may disagree or you may have some thoughts on this. But, you know, in most cases, there is somebody the court looks to as the person that they believe. And it's usually not one of the parties. It's usually a third party that it was there and saw things and they don't have an interest in the case. And they're just trying to say what happened. And I always love it. It was the person on my side. But but that's the person who usually be relaxed and just matter of fact, and they can be very credible. You know, as Tom said, as a mechanic that looked at your car and found the problems, whoever it is, it's always good to have another person there who can can tell the court what actually happened and who doesn't have an interest in place. And for me, I always subpoena them because I've had instance where I think my client didn't show up in court. So how does a person without a lawyer subpoena somebody why don't you answer that question, Jane? Do you want me? I can answer sure. So if you don't, if you don't have a lawyer, the clerk of the court can issue a subpoena for anyone you want to come, but they have to be served by sheriff. You can't just send them the paper or or otherwise. They have to be, although they can be served by a person who is not a party in interest to the case. So it does have to be served upon them so that they know that they have to come to court. So if they're really friendly, they they could accept service, right? Yes, they can accept. So as a friend, you know, it's you're the mechanic you usually go to and you're the other guy who went to screwed you. Your mechanic can accept service and it's cheaper if you do it, but it's actually more convincing to if the person doesn't show up to have the show that show the sheriff served it. Yeah, right. Excuse me. Panel, a question. Does that cost additional money to issue the subpoena? No, I don't think the subpoena should be charged. So the point of the clerk issuing a subpoena is that somebody with authority has to sign the subpoena and without a lawyer, that person is the clerk. And the clerk shouldn't charge you money for issuing the subpoena. It will cost you money to have the sheriff serve the subpoena. No matter which method of service that you choose, whether you have paid the sheriff to do it or you get person over age 18 to do it or they accept service. What you need to do is get the document, again, the certificate of service and file that with the court before the hearing date, because if they don't show up you and you haven't done that, you don't have grounds to say, hey, can we continue this till my witness gets here? But there is also a fee. And I I have to witness fee. There is a witness fee. So if it's your friend, they can waive the witness fee. But if it's not your friend, then you have to pay them thirty five dollars, I believe it is. And I I it might have gone up. So don't don't quote me on that. And then and then a fee an amount of money per mile that they have to to travel as well. And you have with the subpoena, you're supposed to give them a check for that fee for those costs and those costs are recoverable. If you win, yes, those costs are recoverable. The witness being there is going to improve your chances of winning. So we get to the next thing of should I be prepared to negotiate a settlement? And I say always no matter what your claim is, if you've got a really solid claim for five thousand dollars, all you get when you at the end of the road is a judgment. And then you've got to collect it. And it's either your time and and you have to find assets to collect it against. So even and you know, your five thousand dollar claim may actually may not be as clear as you think it is. The judge may look at it very differently. So you have a chance that the judge may reduce what you get. The judge may decide you lose. So every case has risks in it. And basically what a lawyer would do is say, OK, what are the likely chances? How much money will I likely get a judgment for? And and and then you say, what are the chances I'll get that judgment? So it's basically a percentage chance. So if you got a two thirds chance of winning five thousand dollars, that's worth at most thirty six hundred dollars. And then you still got to collect it. So so being prepared to negotiate and trying to talk. And there used to be a system where and it may still be where the judge sends people into the courtroom witness rooms to try to talk settlement to see if they can get a settlement. Judges generally would prefer settlements where people agree. Well, yeah, I would agree with that. But I think we kind of kind of skipped a step just about what happens at trial and how it proceeds. OK, OK. And, you know, what I typically do is I start by explaining the process to to everyone in a small claims court, the judge is the one who controls the trial. Even if you have an attorney there, the judge can control the entire trial, including asking all the questions of the witnesses. Yes, they'll give the attorney an opportunity, but they to do that. But the judge is is often asking the questions. But the plaintiff always goes first because the plaintiff is a person who has to prove their case. And and what judges what I typically do is ask the person to tell me their story. Obviously, I've read the complaint, so I know what the issues are. And I might, you know, ask some questions while they're they're giving me their answers in order to fill in some of the blanks of things that I know are important in order for them to to prove their case or what are the, you know, what the legal requirements are. And then after the plaintiff is finished, then the defendant gets to go and nobody gets to interrupt each other. This is a, you know, this is not an argument where the two people chat back and forth and argue. The judge tries to keep it very, very, you know, one person test of prevents presents their testimony, including their witnesses. The plaintiff gets to put on their entire case first. And if they don't prove the case, then the defendant, you know, the judge may say, you know, I the evidence you presented me does not satisfy the requirement for proving your case. And I I'm going to find for the defendant. So the plaintiff has the burden of proving to the judge that it's more likely than not, I, you know, by what we call a 51 percent. So I have to believe them that it's more likely than not that the other that that that what they're telling me is true. Now, the defendant, then, will get to go and they may tell a completely different story about what happened. So what does the judge do with with with two people telling telling two completely different stories? If there's no other documentation or no other witnesses, you know, and and both witnesses are believable. Now, sometimes somebody will say something and you'll say, well, I can tell that they're not telling the truth because they've changed the story, you know, what they wrote in the answer. And now what they're telling me now is a little different or other facts that just don't don't make sense. But if you have two very believable witnesses and they're both telling, you know, the information, the judge has no choice but to find for the defendant, because if there's a tie, if if if, you know, both people are telling a believable story and the judge can't decide who's telling the truth and who's not, then then that's what we call that then the plaintiff has not born his burden of of of convincing the judge that it's more likely than not that they're telling that that their evidence is is the correct. It's not a huge burden, but it has to be enough to sort of cross that threshold between I've got two completely believable stories here. I'm weighing them and neither one of them tips to scale. That always goes to the defendant. So a tie, if the evidence is tied, if you will, that goes to the defendant. So Tom, as a small claims court judge, what are the biggest mistakes that you see? The biggest mistakes are definitely the ones you just said. I've got tons of pictures, but I left them at home or I have them here on my phone. I'd like to show them to you if you, you know, or I have text messages. I would say the number one thing is people come to court and they say, you know, well, I have I have a document, but I I didn't bring it with me. And it's not in the file. If they didn't attach it to the complaint, you know, I can take something out of the complaint and have it photocopied and enter it in if you've given it to me already. But if you've got to come prepared with documents that are important to prove prove your case. And because this is you get you get one day, the judge isn't going to say not going to drag that person, the defendant back or the plaintiff back another day and say, oh, well, they said they had this other document that will show something. Be prepared. That that is the most probably the most important thing. Another question, I was sorry, Jean, another question. In considering that the court meets during the work day, how much time should somebody who needs to take time off from work plan for the day of the court hearing? I can I can address that. It depends on which court you're in. Every court does it differently. For example, Franklin County used to do it that they would call all the cases at one o'clock. And so there might be five or six cases set for the entire afternoon. And and so the judge would have to try to hear them from one o'clock to four thirty, hear all those cases. So there it just depends on who got, you know, who's ready when when when the judge calls them. And typically there is a list and and most judges will call them on in order of the list. Sometimes judges will call the attorneys first because they don't want, you know, parties to have to be paying the attorney two hours to sit there while you're deciding other cases. So most judges will call the attorneys first in order to save some fees for the parties who have brought their their attorney there. So it sounds like somebody if they need to take an afternoon off, right, if they're going to be heard sometime between one and four. Well, that might that might be true. But some now right now, because we're doing it by zoom, all the cases are set for specific times. So they aren't a rolling that the courts are trying to schedule them so that they start exactly at the time and that they, you know, maybe have a half hour or an hour, depending on what the the court thinks the parties need. So so in those cases, you know, now I would say while we're doing it by zoom, but other courts also do schedule them in half hour blocks. So they might schedule all the cases, but they'll schedule maybe two for an hour. And that way, people don't have to be there all day. So it does depend on the court and how they're trying to to to use their time the best. So can I say something about what happens on the day of trial if you're being sued by a credit card company? Please. So one of the the big things to notice if you're being sued by a credit card company, either the original company or the company that bought the debt from the original company, as I said before, they are all represented by lawyers. And if the plaintiff goes ahead with their case with the lawyer saying this Miss Smith owes this much money, and these are the documents from the company, that is not admissible evidence. What lawyers say is not testimony because by definition, a lawyer only knows what somebody else has told them. They are not a witness to what happened. They don't know anything about the account. They don't know anything about that. So and they are not they don't work at Citibank. So they can't say, I will show you Citibank's records and I can tell you that they're true because they don't work at Citibank. So if you find yourself in a courtroom and the credit card company has only come there with a lawyer, you should say to the judge, they can't prove their case because they don't have a witness and the documents shouldn't come into the court because this lawyer cannot prove to the court that the documents that they have, my credit card statements or whatever are accurate. So a lot of times, though, the judge will let the credit card company turn around and ask you, well, did you have a credit card with Citibank? Yeah, I did. Did you owe the money? Yeah, I did. Well, they say here that you owe them $2,317. Isn't that right? Well, I don't know. I mean, so sometimes they can turn, they can make you a witness against yourself with the credit card company, but that's not what it should be. It should be that the credit card company sends a witness and proves that you owe the money. They also have to prove they own the debt. Yeah, there's the two kinds. There's the original creditor who's suing for the debt buyer. Yep. Okay, so we're gonna move away. That was great, Jean, I really appreciate it. We're gonna move away from the trial, unless anybody has anything further they wanna add on the trial date and talk about getting a judgment. So let's say you win your case and the credit card company's lost its case. So you won your case and you have a judgment. Now what do you do? Well, if it's judgment for the defendant, it means that the plaintiff didn't win. And if you didn't bring a counterclaim, then you get to walk away. And now judgment for the defendant against the credit card case means that that matter has been decided by the court and that credit card company cannot keep asking you to pay. They took the risk, they went to court, the court decided that they couldn't prove their case. They're all done. They can't keep asking you to pay that debt. That's right. They get one shot at the apple, as we say. And they lose that shot. They can't say, oh, okay. And that goes for anybody. If you have a case and you bring it in court and you forgot to bring documents and to prove your case and the judge enters judgment for the defendant, you can't come refile the case and say, well, this time I'm gonna bring my documents and prove my case. Once there's a judgment, that matter is resolved. But I think you're talking about what if you get a judgment against you or you get a judgment against someone? So if Jean gets a judgment against me because she gave me $250 to paint her house, her kitchen and I didn't, and she gets a $250 judgment against me, what are you doing now? And so what is a judgment? So a judgment just says that one person owes the, in small claims court, all it says is one person owes the other person a certain amount of money. So it's a piece of paper by the court saying that either money is owed or no money is owed. It can say that nothing is owed. So it is the decision of the court as to how much, if any, money is owed by one party to the other. And you can't take it to the bank and deposit it? No, and people do get frustrated by the fact that, well, I've got this judgment, but where's my money? You say they owed me $250 but they're refusing to give it to me. And there are things that the law protects people, people who don't have money are protected. And I think I'll let Jean talk about this because that's more up her alley. So, but maybe Ted will also get, like if I sued my landlord because he didn't give me back my security deposit, now I have a judgment against my landlord. What can I do with that judgment? I can file it as a lien against the landlord's house. I can do- Attaches wages. I could try to attach as wages and I could do trustee process against his bank account. So those methods of enforcing a judgment are right in the small claims rules and they more or less explain how to do those things in the small claims rules. But can we go now back to exemptions? So exemptions are, it's a interesting concept. What exemption means is that there is a certain amount and kind and source of income that the court is never authorized to make a person pay a judgment from. In other words, if this is your only income and it fits an exemption, the court cannot order you to pay or cannot find that you're able to pay. In other words, if your only income is exempt, you are not able to pay because you need to keep that income to keep your body and soul together. So that's the notion of it. And so if your only income is from an exempt source, the court can't order you to pay and most likely your wages can't be garnished, et cetera, et cetera. So how does it work exactly? So this is how the court has grouped the rules together. If the debtor has received any benefits from the state of Vermont, then all of their income, including that benefit income, but all of that income and any wages income is exempt from collection. And that makes sense because if the state of Vermont is doing something to support the debtor and the debtor's family, so taxpayers are supporting that person, we don't want that person to turn around and pay a private creditor. So that's why that income is exempt. And then there's an exemption statute that specifies the kinds of income that are always exempt. So any income that anybody gets from the Social Security Administration, any income that anybody gets from the Veterans Administration, workers' compensation benefits, alimony, all of these kinds of income, if that's your kind of income, those individual kinds of income are exempt from collection. But if you're a working person and you're working for wages, if you're working for low wages, that those can be exempt. So if weekly wages before taxes are less than $217.50, then they're exempt from collection. And the way the formula of that works is, our statute says, if your wages are less than 40 times the federal minimum wage, and the federal minimum wage is $7.50, $7.25. So even if you're earning $15 an hour, if the amount that you're taking home, let's say you don't work 40 hours, you work fewer hours than that and you're only taking home $217.50, they're exempt from collection. Jean, there's a question regarding the assets. Looking at motor vehicles up to 2,500 in value. So does that mean if my car is worth $2,000 and I owe a $3,000 debt, is that they can take my car? Well, they will not. They won't take your... Okay. Practical matter, they won't take your car. Okay. But even so, the way that particular statute works, 12VSA 2740 is it will say you can exempt under up to $2,500 of your car, but then there's a wild card exception that you can add to that. And so even if your car's worth $5,000, 2,500 is exempt because it's specifically listed as a motor vehicle, but then you can take the other 2,500 from the wild car exemption. There you go. Ted's showing it, the overall exemption. So yes. And I want to say again, as a practical matter, even if you did have something of value that a creditor thought they could take, creditors aren't really interested in taking your stuff. They're interested in getting paid money. So even though technically it's legal in Vermont to get an order to take something valuable from someone, that it is very unlikely to happen. I guess unless it's a really specific thing, like the reason I'm suing you is because you're holding my, yeah, no, it's not likely to happen. I'll just leave it like that. I was gonna talk about the other exemption, which is one of the reasons for the financial disclosure, disclosure affidavit. So all a part of your wages are exempt. And I was looking at the 75% which is if it's, if you owe the plumber, they can take 75% of your take-home bay as exempt. But if you put credit card, 85% of your take-home bay is exempt. Then the other part is on that financial disclosure form that Ted has on the other screen, you can make a case by listing all of your expenses and then listing all of your income. If your income isn't meeting your expenses and your expenses are reasonable to take care of your family, that you need each and every dollar that you bring in to meet the reasonable expenses of a family, you can also be exempt from collection in that way. So what is not reasonable? Well, if you decide that I wanna pay for a vehicle that's way beyond what I can afford based on my income, the judge might say, get rid of that vehicle and get a cheaper vehicle because that's not something that should exempt you from collection and the judge could look and say, while you're spending $400 a month on a cable package, perhaps that's not a reasonable expense that should keep you from paying your debt. But- I do wanna say though, Jean, the judge is not going to tell you, you have to stop paying for that vehicle. What the judge is going to say is I'm not going to exempt, I'm not going to find you exempt. So what you may find yourself in the position of is, you have a $80,000 income, but you've got all this credit card debt, or you've got all these expenses, like a $400 cable package and you buy yourself an $80,000 truck and you're making huge payments on it. The judge is gonna say, well, I know you have these expenses, but that's the problem you put yourself in. I don't find that that is a reasonable expense for a vehicle in your situation. Right, so that makes you, when you look at that, Ted, can you put up the financial disclosure form? I'll go to try. Yes, so there it is over there. On the one hand, it puts the expenses in it and it starts with necessities, rent, mortgage payment, electric service, food, phone, clothing. All of those are really reasonable. An auto loan payment is reasonable, unless it's like $2,000 a month. Then it's not reasonable. Though that's how the judge is able to tell that your expenses are reasonable or not. So if your reasonable expenses add up to more than your household income, you can convince the judge that your income should be exempt from collection. So. Though I guess I would say if you had a truck that that truck was absolutely necessary for your job, the judge might would take that into consideration. Right, which is why when, so if you have a judgment, if I'm the one that has a judgment against Tom and I want Tom to pay, one of my first steps would be to ask for a financial disclosure hearing and Tom is supposed to come there with his financial disclosure affidavit all filled out. And the judge's basic question at that first financial disclosure hearing is, can you afford to pay the judgment that Gene has against you? And Tom could try to make a case that he can't afford to pay it based on his financial disclosure affidavit. And I think Tom could afford to pay $250, but I'm not the judge. So. He's just got to stop doing donuts in your driveway. That's why we both go to court to talk about it. Cause if Tom can afford to pay, he should pay. If he can't afford to pay, then I'm, you know. But understand the judge may not make you pay it all at once. The judge may make you pay $50 a week or the judge may make you pay, you know, $200 a month or something else like that. So they can look at it just because you may not, they look at your finances and say, you can't pay everything, but I do see that, you know, you can afford to pay $225 a week until I pay Gene off that $25. But interest will accrue on that. So that's... Okay, so we're going to jump ahead here because it's 28 after the hour. So I just want to talk about an appeal. You can appeal. You've got to do it within 30 days. And that means take it down to the court. Don't trust the mail. I don't wait until the 28th day and then put it in the mail. The fee is $120, but it's only on the record that you created in small claims court. So in other words, it's got to be pretty obvious that the judge made a huge mistake. And I don't know what the rate of overturning small claims appeal is, but I suspect it's pretty low. Yeah. Well, it depends, it depends. I mean, you know, the judge may make a mistake on the law and, you know, with acting judges that can sometimes happen, you know, you get an attorney who's sitting there may not have known the specific legal issue and they can make a mistake. Right now, just so you all know the... Because of a new computer system, only superior court judges are hearing the cases. They don't have acting judges. Right. So, yeah, which is interesting because Tom was a great acting judge in small claims, but now the regular appointed judges who are paid by the state to be judges are the ones who are hearing the cases. Okay, so I think we've kind of answered this question about you asked for a financial disclosure hearing if the defendant hasn't paid your judgment, right? Right. And there's a form for that called the motion for a financial disclosure hearing. And since it's 20 and a half to the hour, I think we won't go into that in any detail. So I do want to close then with, unless the panelists want to think that we've missed something we need to cover. No, just as there is any last minute questions. Okay. That the people who signed up on Zoom, these are some, I was amazed at the quality of the materials that are out there right now. And when I say that, there's a really good guide from the judiciary. The court forms are online. Vermont Law Help has two good sections, one on small claims court, which includes videos to show you basic things. There is a money debt section of the Vermont Law Help and a defend yourself in court on credit card debt. So these are really, they're really well done and people should use those if you get into the situation. So I want to thank our really terrific presenters whose knowledge of this subject matter is greatly deep and we've only plumbed the debts slightly in the last hour and a half. Gene Murray of Vermont Legal Aid, Tom Nuovo of Bauer Gravel, Farnam and Lisa Jensen, who is a game lease fielded some questions. And so if you have any further questions, please call the consumer assistance program, use Vermont Legal Aid and there are resources for getting a lawyer to look at. Those are very good first steps. Vermont Law Help and online help is an excellent first step. And before you do go to court, make sure you've talked through the case with somebody who's got some knowledge and experience so you will do the best job possible. Thank you all, wonderful panelists and I really appreciate your being here. So good night everybody. Thank you. Good night. Good night. Thank you Ted for setting this all up. Great to see everybody. You too.