Sued on a promissory note in New York.

A promissory note lawsuit in New York arrives as a motion, not a complaint. Under CPLR 3213 the lender serves a summons and a summary judgment motion together, and your response can be due in twenty days. Real defenses exist. Payment, forgery, want of consideration, alteration, and a broken chain of transfer can each defeat it.

Why does a promissory note case move faster than an ordinary lawsuit?

A promissory note is the classic instrument for the payment of money only, so New York lets the lender skip the complaint. CPLR 3213 permits a summons served together with a motion for summary judgment. There is no answer and no discovery unless the motion is denied. The return date is your deadline.

The return date cannot be earlier than your time to appear. That is twenty days if the summons was personally delivered to you inside New York, and thirty days for most other methods of service. If the lender sets a later return date, your opposition can be due up to ten days before it. Miss the date and the motion goes unopposed, which almost always ends in judgment. Even then, a lender whose own papers fail loses.

There is a threshold fight worth having. CPLR 3213 reaches only an instrument for the payment of money only. The Court of Appeals has held that an instrument does not qualify if outside proof is needed, beyond simple proof of nonpayment or a similar minor deviation from the face of the document. Mentioning a separate loan agreement does not disqualify a note. Needing that agreement to prove the right to payment does. On denial, the papers become the complaint and answer unless the court orders otherwise, and the case proceeds as an ordinary action with discovery.

Law: CPLR 3213; CPLR 320(a); Weissman v. Sinorm Deli, Inc., 88 N.Y.2d 437 (1996).

What does the lender have to prove to win on the note?

The lender must show three things: the note, executed by you, containing an unequivocal and unconditional obligation to repay, and your failure to pay according to its terms. The showing must be in admissible form. Then the burden shifts to you to raise a triable issue on a bona fide defense.

The nonpayment element is easier to fumble than it looks. A payment history is hearsay unless a witness lays the business records foundation. In one Second Department decision an assignee lost summary judgment because its account officer had no personal knowledge of the originating bank’s record-keeping. No admissible proof of default, no prima facie case.

Law: Kwok Ching Cheung v. Sunrise Plaza, LLC, 237 A.D.3d 799 (2d Dept 2025); Griffon V, LLC v. 11 E. 36th, LLC, 90 A.D.3d 705 (2d Dept 2011); Cadlerock Joint Venture, L.P. v. Trombley, 150 A.D.3d 957 (2d Dept 2017); Winegrad v. New York Univ. Med. Ctr., 64 N.Y.2d 851 (1985).

What are the real defenses to a promissory note in New York?

Seven defenses do real work against a promissory note in New York: payment, forgery, want or failure of consideration, material alteration, that the note is not yet due, non-performance of a condition precedent, and that the plaintiff is not entitled to enforce. Most are codified in the Uniform Commercial Code as New York enacted it.

• Payment. Payment discharges the note. You have to raise it, and here that means your opposition papers. Find the wire confirmations, canceled checks, and ledger entries.
• Forgery or an unauthorized signature. An unauthorized signature is wholly inoperative as that of the person whose name appears, unless he ratifies it or is precluded from denying it. It covers a partner or bookkeeper who signed without authority, not just a stranger.
• Want or failure of consideration. A defense against anyone who does not hold the note in due course, and partial failure is a defense to that extent. One limit matters. No consideration is needed for a note given in payment of, or as security for, a debt you already owed.
• Material alteration. An alteration is material if it changes the contract of any party, including completion of a blank other than as authorized or an addition to the writing as signed. A fraudulent and material alteration by the holder discharges any party whose obligation it changes, unless that party assents. Any other alteration discharges nobody, and the note is enforced on its original terms.
• The note is not yet due. Where the note is payable in installments and acceleration is optional, the lender has to have actually exercised the option the way the note prescribes, usually written notice. Some notes accelerate automatically, so read yours. No proper acceleration, no accelerated debt to sue for.
• Non-performance of a condition precedent. Expressly a defense against a party who is not a holder in due course. New York also permits proof of an oral condition to the legal effectiveness of a signed writing, if it does not contradict the express terms.
• The plaintiff is not entitled to enforce. The person suing must be the one the law lets collect. First thing to check, easiest to overlook.

Law: NY UCC 3-306; 3-307; 3-404; 3-407; 3-408; CPLR 3211(a)(5); Hicks v. Bush, 10 N.Y.2d 488 (1962).

How do you challenge the lender’s right to enforce the note?

The plaintiff suing on the note must be entitled to enforce it. Under the Uniform Commercial Code the holder may enforce payment in its own name. A note payable to order is negotiated by delivery with the necessary indorsement. Until the indorsement is made, there is no presumption the transferee owns it.

The indorsement must be on the note itself or on a paper firmly affixed to it. That paper is the allonge.

Now apply it. Notes get sold, often twice. Demand the original and read the reverse side. On each allonge check that the transferor held the note immediately before, that an authorized person signed, and that the names match exactly.

A gap is not fatal on its own. A transfer still vests in the transferee whatever rights the transferor had, so the lender may prove the assignment another way. What a gap removes is the easy path. The lender has to prove each transfer with admissible evidence, and if it cannot, the motion fails. Denial is not dismissal. It turns the papers into pleadings and sends you to discovery.

Law: NY UCC 3-201(1); 3-201(3); 3-202; 3-301.

Can you defend by showing you never received what the note was for?

Want or failure of consideration is a defense against anyone who is not a holder in due course. Consideration means the thing you were promised in exchange for signing. If the money was never advanced, or the promised asset never delivered, the note fails for want of consideration.

The defense survives summary judgment when facts support it. The Second Department reversed summary judgment on a note in 2025 because the defendants’ affidavits raising lack of consideration created issues requiring trial. Note the mechanism. They did not disprove the note. They put a fact in dispute.

A related defense reaches the lender’s own conduct. In a 2026 decision the Second Department affirmed denial of summary judgment where the defendants raised issues as to whether the bank improperly imposed heightened payments after declaring a default under a deposit relationship provision, and whether that conduct caused the later payment default. A lender that manufactured the default it sues on has a triable issue.

Law: NY UCC 3-408; Kwok Ching Cheung v. Sunrise Plaza, LLC, 237 A.D.3d 799 (2d Dept 2025); MMG Invs. III, LLC v. Elite Decor, Inc., 2026 NY Slip Op 02979 (2d Dept 2026).

How long does a lender have to sue you on a promissory note?

Six years. An action on an unsecured promissory note is an action on a contractual obligation under CPLR 213(2). The hard question is not the length of the period but when it started. That turns on whether the note is payable on demand, at a definite time, or in installments.

Two of those rules deserve emphasis. A demand note accrues at execution, so one signed more than six years before suit is time-barred even though nobody ever demanded. The exception is a note whose terms make repayment due only on request; there the Second Department held in 2026 that the clock runs from the actual request. Each missed installment also starts its own six-year period, so a note in default since 2016 may be partly dead and partly alive. Acceleration pulls the remaining installments forward. It does not resurrect the barred ones.

Law: CPLR 213(2); CPLR 213(4); CPLR 214-i; Phoenix Acquisition Corp. v. Campcore, Inc., 81 N.Y.2d 138 (1993); Cannell v. Grail Partners, LLC, 2020 NY Slip Op 00973 (1st Dept 2020); Minihane v. Brown, 2026 NY Slip Op 01505 (2d Dept 2026).

Can the lender restart the six-year clock?

Yes, but not easily. A written acknowledgment signed by you is the only competent evidence of a new or continuing contract under General Obligations Law 17-101, and it has to recognize an existing debt and contain nothing inconsistent with an intention to pay it. Part payment can also restart the clock.

Part payment carries its own conditions. It has to be payment of a portion of an admitted debt, made and accepted as such, with circumstances amounting to an absolute and unqualified acknowledgment that more is due, from which a promise to pay the rest can be inferred. A payment under protest, or on a disputed balance, does not do it.

The consequence is severe. A goodwill payment on a balance you concede can hand back a defense that had already vested. One carve-out. Where credit was extended to an individual primarily for personal, family, or household purposes, the period is three years and no later payment revives it. That does not reach a business note or your guarantee of one.

The last trap is procedural. The limitations defense is waived unless raised by motion or in the responsive pleading. In a CPLR 3213 posture there is no responsive pleading, so it has to appear in your opposition papers. A limitations defense raised late is a limitations defense lost.

Six years of silence is a complete defense. A payment in year five can hand it back, but only if it reads as an admission that more is owed.

Law: General Obligations Law 17-101; CPLR 214-i; CPLR 105(f); CPLR 3211(a)(5); CPLR 3211(e); Lew Morris Demolition Co. v. Board of Educ. of City of N.Y., 40 N.Y.2d 516 (1976).

What should you do first?

Three documents and one date decide most promissory note cases. Find the signed note, every allonge attached to it, and your own payment records. Then calculate the accrual date. Do it before you speak to the lender, and before the return date.

1. Read the summons for the return date. That is your hard deadline, and it can fall twenty days after service.
2. Pull the note itself, not the lender’s exhibit copy. Compare signature, principal, rate, and maturity against your file copy. Any difference is a possible material alteration.
3. Establish when the obligation came due. On demand, at a definite time, or in installments. Then count six years forward and see where the lawsuit falls.
4. Trace the plaintiff back to the original payee. Look for an indorsement or allonge at each transfer. Where one is missing, the lender must prove it another way.
5. Ask whether you got what the note was for. If the money was never advanced, that answer drives the entire defense.
6. Make no payment and sign no acknowledgment. Either can restart a clock that had already run out.