You signed a personal guaranty. Here is what that actually means now.

A personal guaranty is a separate contract. It makes you a defendant in your own right, alongside your company, and New York courts enforce the standard form of it very strictly. The defences that work are narrow, specific, and mostly about the guaranty itself rather than the underlying deal.

A guaranty is a promise to pay someone else’s debt. When your company borrowed, leased, took an advance or opened a trade account, the other side almost certainly asked an owner to sign one. That signature is why your own name is on the summons and why your house and your personal accounts are in the conversation at all.

Why is the guaranty a separate case from the company’s case?

Because it is a separate contract. The company’s obligation and your guaranty are two promises, and a plaintiff may sue on either or both. This is why the company filing for bankruptcy does not end the claim against you, and why a dispute about the quality of the goods or services does not automatically become your defence.

Most commercial guaranties in New York are drafted as absolute and unconditional. That phrase is doing real work. It is the drafter’s attempt to strip you of every defence that belongs to the company, and New York’s Court of Appeals has held that a guaranty in that form is enforced according to its terms.

Law: Cooperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank B.A. v. Navarro, 25 N.Y.3d 485 (2015).

How quickly can this move against me?

Faster than an ordinary lawsuit. A guaranty is usually an instrument for the payment of money only, which lets the plaintiff skip the complaint and move straight for summary judgment under CPLR 3213. The first paper you receive can be a motion, not a pleading, and the case can reach judgment in weeks rather than years.

The mechanics matter. When the motion is served together with the summons, the return date must give you at least the time you would have had to appear — twenty days if you were served personally within New York, thirty days in most other circumstances. That is the whole window. There is no separate time to answer, because there is nothing to answer.

Law: CPLR 3213; CPLR 320(a).

On a guaranty, the first document you are handed can be the one that ends the case.

What defences actually survive an absolute and unconditional guaranty?

The ones directed at the guaranty rather than at the underlying transaction. A defence that says “the company did not owe this money” usually fails. A defence that says “this guaranty does not do what they claim it does” is where cases are won.

• You did not sign it, or not in that capacity. Signature disputes are real, and so is signing solely as an officer rather than personally.
• The guaranty does not cover this obligation. Guaranties are often limited to a particular agreement, a particular facility, or a capped amount. Debts incurred outside that scope are not guaranteed.
• It was revoked. A continuing guaranty can generally be terminated as to future obligations, on its own terms. Debts incurred after a valid revocation are not yours.
• A condition precedent was never met. If the guaranty requires notice, demand or default before liability attaches, the plaintiff has to show it happened.
• The number is wrong. Payments, credits, offsets and the plaintiff’s own charges are all fair game, and a guaranty that is enforceable in principle can still be enforceable for far less than the sum demanded.
• There is no writing. A promise to answer for another’s debt is unenforceable in New York unless it is in writing and signed by the guarantor.

Law: General Obligations Law 5-701(a)(2).

Does it matter that the deal itself was unfair?

Rarely, and not in the way owners expect. Complaints about how the other side performed belong to the company and are usually barred by the guaranty’s own waiver language. They are not worthless — they can drive a settlement, and they may be counterclaims for the company — but they will not by themselves defeat a motion against you personally.

What this means for you

Treat a guaranty case as its own emergency, on its own clock, separate from whatever is happening to the company. Find the executed guaranty and read what it actually says, not what you remember agreeing to. Check the date, the scope, the cap, and whether the debt being sued on falls inside it. Then count the days on the notice you were served with, because on a CPLR 3213 motion that date is the only one that matters.