Being sued for old credit card debt, need help

I received a phone call from my mother saying that I had a certified letter there that was a court summons for that county. She could not sign for the letter, so she called the courthouse to find out what it was regarding..

I am in a different state now, but apparently a lawsuit was filed on behalf of an original creditor for what is showing as 4200.00 on my credit report. This is about 1300.00 higher than what the debt was when the account went into collections back in 2002. Being young and stupid, I dealt with a collection agency who agreed to settle for less than the amount owed. I sent in 3 checks, and my balance was never reduced. After this, I stopped paying on the account, and shortly moved out of state in order to go back to school.

I pulled my credit report today, and it shows that the last payment made to the account was in Jan of 03. The statute of limitations expires Jan of 07, which is why I guess they are suing me now.

I have student grants and loans right now, and am in school fulltime while I work part time. There is no way I can make payments or can afford to have my wages garnished as I am barely making it as it is. What should I do? Why did they send the summons to an address I have not lived at for almost 4 years?

Normally they have to serve you before they can commence the suit; so you may want to avoid service for now. Eventually you could negotiate a settlement with them, or even threaten to declare bankruptcy if they will not work with you.