I loaned a friend $3,000 a few months ago — now he won’t return my calls. How do I get my money back now?

For example, let’s say Lucia loaned her friend Louis $3,000 five months ago. Now, Louis won’t return her calls, and Lucia is wondering if there’s anything she can do to get the money back.

Unfortunately, experts say that collecting the borrowed funds probably won’t be easy.

Can you recover money that your friend won’t pay back?

First and foremost, if you loaned money to a friend, you technically have a legal right to collect that debt.

“Friend or no friend, if the money was intended as a loan by you and your friend, you are a lender. As a lender, you are entitled to be repaid,” Jocelyn Nager, managing partner at Frank, Frank, Goldstein & Nager, P.C., told Moneywise. “As a lender or creditor, you can sue to enforce your rights for repayment.”

Of course, you’ll need to prove that the money transfer was a loan, not just a gift.

Andrellos Mitchell, a DC civil litigation attorney, told Moneywise that “written and oral communications can help to show the intentions of the parties.” So, you can use things like texts, emails, Venmo descriptions and more to demonstrate your friend promised to pay.

Why suing a friend for unpaid funds may not pay off

Pursuing a case against a friend for the unpaid $3,000 may seem like the obvious solution if you need to get paid back and they aren’t returning your calls. But there are problems with using the legal system to recover your funds.

“Most civil lawyers won’t take a case for less than $5K, which costs more than the amount borrowed,” Shane M. Boasberg, an Austin-based civil lawyer, told Moneywise. “Sure, you can get attorney fees awarded from a court for the cost of litigating a suit, if you win, but you’ll still run into the issue of your friend not having the money to pay you back.”

“There’s an old saying, ‘You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip,’ which applies in situations like these,” said Boasberg.

James Crowson, founder of Crowson Law Group, also warned that going to court would be a “massive headache” in this situation and suggested that you consider whether a “mutual friend is willing to step in and mediate.”

As Crowson told Moneywise, “a gentle nudge from a third party can sometimes coax out a reasonable payment plan without setting off a massive legal feud, assuming they’re open to getting dragged into the middle of it, of course.”

If that fails, Crowson explained that if you have to go to court or are committed to doing so, “small claims court is your cheapest and most straightforward option, but the cap depends heavily on where you live,” so you may not be able to sue for the full amount.

Lucia may want to just consider this an expensive lesson

With multiple lawyers warning of the downsides of fighting for the money, Lucia may just want to write off the funds as a lesson learned if Louis won’t pay voluntarily.