MCA debt relief and lawsuit defense in Missouri2026 rankings, and the clocks that run against you

Sued by an MCA funder in Missouri: the clocks, the confession of judgment, and the defenses that survive

There is a version of this problem where you have time and a version where you do not. If a petition was served on you, you have weeks. If a judgment from another state has been registered in a Missouri circuit court, you may have less, and the deadline is measured from a date you may not have written down.

Start by identifying which document you are holding. A summons and petition means a lawsuit is beginning. A notice of registration means one already ended somewhere else and is being imported. Those are different emergencies. The rest of this page tells you what Missouri law does with each one, and what it refuses to do no matter how bad the contract was.

Which document you are holding decides everything

A funder that wants your money has three routes. Sue you here. Sue you where the contract says, usually New York, then bring the judgment here. Or take a judgment on a cognovit clause and register that.

Write the date of service on the face of whatever you were handed. Then read the caption. If it names a Missouri circuit court and asks for judgment, you are being sued. If it references a judgment entered elsewhere and a petition to register, you are past the merits and into a much shorter calendar.

Do not call the funder before you know which one it is. That call gets recorded and the acknowledgments in it get quoted back.

A judgment from another state, registered here

Missouri does not use the quick notice-filing model. Under § 511.760 a foreign judgment is registered by verified petition, a summons issues, and it is served on the judgment debtor as in an action on the judgment. You get a real proceeding, which is a genuine advantage over states where the clerk simply accepts a filing.

The advantage has a fuse on it. Defenses, setoffs and counterclaims must be filed within thirty days after personal jurisdiction is acquired, or within thirty five days after the clerk mails the notice. Nothing in your contract extends that, and nothing about being busy tolls it.

If the window has already closed, § 511.250 is the remaining door: a judgment of a court of record cannot be set aside for irregularity on motion unless the motion is made within three years after the term at which it was rendered. Three years is generous compared to thirty days. It is not forever.

Missouri permits confessions of judgment, with conditions the funder ignored

Some states void these clauses outright. Missouri does not. Section 511.070 allows a judgment by confession without action, for money due or to become due.

The conditions are where the fight is. Section 511.080 requires a written statement, signed by the defendant, verified by affidavit, stating the amount for which judgment may be rendered, authorizing entry, and where the debt is money due or to become due, stating concisely the facts out of which it arose and showing the sum confessed is justly due. Section 511.090 requires the statement and affidavits to be filed and the court to satisfy itself that the defendant executed the statement and made the affidavit. A boilerplate cognovit paragraph inside an advance agreement signed months before any default supplies none of that.

One trap. Section 408.365 bans powers of attorney to confess judgment, but only in retail time contracts and retail charge agreements under the consumer sections. It does not reach a commercial advance, and quoting it at a funder marks you as unrepresented.

The usury defense you were promised does not exist

Missouri has a criminal usury statute. Section 408.095 makes it a misdemeanor to take, directly or indirectly, by commissions or brokerage charges or otherwise, interest greater than two percent a month. Twenty four percent a year. Your factor rate is a multiple of that.

Read the exception. The statute punishes rates taken except as permitted by the laws of this state, and § 408.035 permits any rate the parties agree to in writing on credit extended primarily for business or commercial purposes. A ninety percent effective rate is not a crime in Missouri. No prosecutor is coming, and § 408.060 separately bars a corporation from interposing usury as a defense at all.

A defense firm that pleads usury in a Missouri answer has told the court and the funder that it does not know this jurisdiction.

The defenses that survive a Missouri answer

1. Breach of the reconciliation covenant. The funder drafted a promise to adjust the draw against actual receipts. Requests made in the contract's own manner and ignored are the funder's breach, pleaded against the funder's own paper.
2. Recharacterization. A true purchase carries risk. A deal with fixed daily amounts, no genuine reconciliation and full recourse through a guaranty looks like a loan. In Missouri it produces no usury claim, but it reshapes how default, acceleration and remedy clauses are read.
3. The guaranty. Who signed it, in what capacity, and whether the conditions it names actually happened.
4. Conditions precedent and damages. Amounts already collected, misapplied payments, and the arithmetic between the total of payments and the balance now demanded.

Limitations rarely saves a Missouri defendant. Section 516.110(1) gives ten years on a writing for the payment of money. The paper is almost always young enough.

The first 72 hours after you are served

Photograph every page including the envelope. Note the date of service. Pull the advance agreement, the guaranty, ninety days of statements and any reconciliation request you sent, with the timestamp. Run a UCC search in your exact registered name.

Then get a lawyer, and understand what the three firms on this page are. They are debt relief and settlement companies. They negotiate. None of them files an answer, appears at a hearing or moves to set a judgment aside. Delancey Street is attorney-founded and works alongside counsel, which is why it ranks first here, but a defense in a Missouri circuit court is representation and representation is a different service. Most funders would rather take a discount than litigate. Settlement and defense usually run together, in that order.