Ignoring legal documents can cause major problems

Receiving legal documents can be intimidating and confusing, but ignoring them can lead to trouble. A reader of my Legal Briefs column, which appears in the Toledo Blade every other week, recently asked whether she needed to respond to legal documents she received last year on behalf of her brother. As I told her in the column, I suspect that her brother had been sued as the result of causing a car accident and that she had received a copy of the complaint. Not responding can lead to a variety of problems, probably the most serious of which is that the other side can essentially get a court to declare it the winner of the case and ask for money damages. So, if you've received a legal document from a court or an attorney, please consult a lawyer to advise you. It will be cheaper in the long run than ignoring the problem.