Accidentally Revived A Time-barred Debt. When Should I Get A Lawyer?

Location: Salt Lake City, UT

I recently made a pretty significant mistake that has been causing me a lot of anxiety. In early 2020, around the time COVID started, I got an auto loan and purchased a vehicle. I was in the height of a severe addiction and did not care about my finances whatsoever, but had a lot of money at the time from getting massive unemployment checks during COVID. Eventually I stopped making my car payments and the vehicle was repossessed. I don’t have any information about the re-sale of the vehicle as I became homeless shortly after, and therefore never received any mail related to the vehicle or the amount of money I still owed. Eventually my remaining debt was sold to a collections agency.

I thought nothing of it until recently. I have been clean for 3 years now and have been trying to improve my credit, reduce my debt, and become financially responsible. I was checking my credit report and saw a collections account for the old auto loan. I decided to make my first payment in an effort to avoid them eventually filing a lawsuit and garnishing my wages.

A few days later, after doing some research, I realized I had made a big mistake. Nearly 6 years has passed since my last payment on the loan — which is the statute of limitations in Utah. The debt was time-barred, and making that payment revived the debt and reset the clock for the statute of limitations.

I’m now extremely worried that the collections agency will file a lawsuit since the debt is around $11,000. Just wondering if I should look into getting an attorney BEFORE the lawsuit is filed (for instance, maybe they could help me come to an agreement/figure out a settlement before it gets to the point of involving the court system) or if I should wait until the collections agency takes me to court and serves me with a summons.