Sometimes you plan to buy or refinance a home and boo! Skeletons pop out of every closet and ghosts come out from under every bed! Huh? Your credit is perfect! ....cue scary music....EEEEEEEEEEE!!!

It's the Night of the Living Debt! So now you have all these lawyers crawling over you and collection agencies threatening to derail your mortgage. Sometimes they even take you to court! How does this happen?

It's often called Zombie debt. By the time you graduated from college, your creditors probably got tired of hounding you to repay all your pizza and beer tabs, and trying to recover the funds that went to Vegas....and stayed in Vegas... and they sold these unpaid receivables off to a collection agency. Those guys took a whack at it, and when they get tired of being told to pound sand they sold it again, and again, and again, until years and years later some outfit picked up your antique debt for pennies on the dollar. Except with a couple of decade's worth of interest, fees, and penalties added in.

Do you have to pay this? It depends. First, do not make contact with a collection company until you check your state's statute of limitations on debt collection. That's the amount of time that a creditor can force you to pay a debt. Once that time has passed, these collectors can try all they want but you don't have to give them a thing. It's important, though, that you don't inadvertently restart that clock by sending a partial payment, agreeing to any terms, or sending them any letters. Just don't communicate except with your lawyer.

They may still take you to court. That's okay. Lawyer J.P. Clubb, in an interview by the Southeast Missourian, says that you as a defendant must assert that the law bars the lawsuit in order to have a judge consider the statute of limitations as a defense, but when successful it can result in the collection company paying YOU a judgment!

"The saddest thing is that people are scared," Clubb said. "It is a bunch of attorneys in suits sitting in this little bitty courtroom. It is very nervous, especially if you are not an attorney. You are called in front of the judge, and all these people are looking at you and you just don't know what to do."

The best defense other than an expiration of the statute of limitations is to demand the collector's attorney produce supporting documentation for the debt, Clubb said. "They don't have any evidence. They dry up if anyone fights them."

So if some aggressive collector comes after you for a bill that's older than your college freshman daughter, don't just roll over. Check the statute of limitations in your state, get some legal help if you need to, keep those guys from sticking a judgment on your credit report and messing up your refinance.