Sued By LVNV Funding, LLC? Here's Help.
If you've been sued by LVNV Funding, LLC, you're probably trying to figure out who LVNV even is. Odds are you never borrowed from them, never had a card with their name on it, and never spoke to anyone who works there. There's a reason for that. LVNV Funding is a debt buyer, and an unusually invisible one. It buys old credit card accounts by the portfolio, for next to nothing, and its role more or less ends at owning them.
The collecting is done by a different company. The letters and calls come from Resurgent Capital Services, the servicer that manages LVNV's accounts, and when a lawsuit gets filed in LVNV's name, Resurgent's machinery is what runs it. Both companies sit under the same parent, Sherman Financial Group. So the company suing you is a holding shell, the company contacting you is its servicer, and neither one ever did business with you.
None of that corporate structure changes your deadline. You generally have thirty days from being served to file a written response with the court. What the structure does change is what LVNV has to prove, and it's worth understanding that before you decide what to do.
The ownership question
A defended collection case usually comes down to proof, and the first thing a debt buyer must prove is that it owns your account. The whole industry is, in my view, a square peg being forced into a round hole. The square peg is the bulk collection business these companies want to run through the courts. The round hole is a court system built to decide cases one at a time, under rules of evidence, with rights on your side of the table. Bulk is the business model, and bulk is exactly what makes real proof hard to produce.
Debt buyers purchase massive portfolios on spreadsheets. The specific assignment of your account is often missing or defective — and without it, they cannot prove they own the debt. For a shell-and-servicer operation like LVNV and Resurgent, that paper trail has extra links in it, and every link is a place the proof can fail. Lawyers call the trail chain of title, and you're entitled to make them produce yours.
There's a line in my FAQs that applies here almost word for word. If you are being sued by anyone other than the original creditor, there is a good chance that the entity suing you does not even own the account. LVNV is a textbook example of why that line exists.
And if part of you hesitates to fight because the debt was real once, look at what actually happened. In my view, a company that paid pennies for your old account, hoping the courthouse would turn somebody's hardest year into a windfall, has no special claim on your guilt. You didn't choose this course. They did. Make them prove it.
I know this collector
I've been defending Californians against LVNV Funding for years, in over 60 cases against this single debt buyer, and in hundreds more against nearly identical foes. I won't characterize results here, because past results can't promise you anything about your case. The value of that history is narrower and more practical. When an LVNV complaint lands on my desk, I already know the corporate structure behind it and the paper trail it has to include.
Use the thirty days
From the day you're served, you generally have thirty days to file a written response with the court. If nothing gets filed, LVNV can ask for an automatic judgment against you (called a default judgment), and with a judgment they can levy your bank account, meaning they take the money directly, garnish your wages if you have a job, or put a lien on your house. The corporate structure won't save you from any of that by itself. Responding is what makes the structure matter, because a defended case is where the proof gets tested.
Two reads that will help. If you're staring at a summons, here's how to calculate your deadline, which is more particular than people expect. And if what you received is only a collection letter, from Resurgent or anyone else, that's a different situation with different advice, covered in responding to collection letters.
Let it be my problem
If you'd rather hand this off, the consultation is free, it takes fifteen minutes, and you speak with me directly. No intake screener, no telemarketer. Although the outcome can't be guaranteed, you can offload the process, so you know that whatever can be done is being done while you go about the other things in your life. It's sort of like the alarm clock by your bed. Once it's set, your brain stops holding the time, because that's taken care of. Until then, LVNV, Resurgent, Sherman, and the whole spreadsheet are my problem, not yours.