I Have a Judgment Against Me Because I Goofed and Now I Need to Remove It!
You fell behind on your payments and your creditor decided to pursue a judgment against you. Even though you appeared at the hearing, your creditor was granted the judgment. Now, you don’t know what to do or where to turn to delete the judgment entry from your credit report.
What’s worse, you didn’t realize how much this would affect your credit score. The fact is, a judgment can remain on your credit history anywhere from 10-12 years and, if the debt is still unpaid at the end of this time period, your creditor may be able to renew the judgment. Even a paid judgment will remain on your credit report for seven years from the date paid!
Now it’s time to think about removing that pesky judgment from your credit report. To begin, it is important to understand that it is illegal to remove an accurate item from a credit report. Knowing this, there are two ways to remove a FALSE entry. You can remove a credit report entry by proving that the entry is false. You can also remove a credit report entry by disputing the entry and, if the entry is not verified by your creditor within 30 days, the entry must be removed by the credit reporting agency. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) allows consumers the right to dispute negative items, including judgments and public records.
If you decide that you would like to dispute a judgment entry on your credit report, it will be necessary to send a dispute letter to the credit reporting agencies that are reporting the judgment. Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion are the three major credit reporting agencies. With entries such as credit cards or car loans, the dispute would be forwarded to credit card companies, banks, credit unions, loan companies, car dealerships, etc.
Unlike car loans and credit cards, judgment and public record information is located in governmental buildings and maintained by county personnel. In light of this, a judgment dispute will be forwarded in most cases to the county courthouse in your county. As humans verify this type of information, as opposed to fancy software programs, it normally takes longer to verify this type of dispute and, in many cases, the verification is not able to be completed within the specified time frame of 30 days. When this happens, the credit reporting agency, by law, must remove the judgment entry from your credit report.
It is possible for you to move forward with credit repair on your own. However, if you do not have the time or if you just don’t enjoy wrangling with credit reporting agencies, you might consider speaking to a consumer rights attorney. The typical consumer rights attorney has tackled hundreds, and maybe even thousands, of similar cases.
Removing a judgement is possible. Discover the only legal way to remove any questionable credit report judgement at www.creditreportjudgement.com.