Can I Remove a Judgment Myself?
Your creditor threatened a court-ordered judgment but you thought that, if you waited long enough, he would get tired of pursuing you and let it go!...
Your creditor threatened a court-ordered judgment but you thought that, if you waited long enough, he would get tired of pursuing you and let it go! Unfortunately, that’s not how it turned out and now a judgment has been issued against you.
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!
So, you’re wondering how to go about removing the judgment. The first thing you need to know is that it is illegal for a credit reporting bureau to remove an accurate entry. The only types of entries which may be legally erased from a credit report are those which are false in nature or those which are disputed but which are not verified by the creditor within the mandated time period. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) was enacted in order to allow consumers to dispute items which are negative in nature. Judgments and public records are included in the FCRA.
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.
However, with a judgment or public record, the credit reporting agency will forward the dispute to the governmental agency which maintains the record, normally located in the county courthouse of your resident county. Recording and verifying judgments is performed by county employees, not high-tech automated software programs. As it takes longer for a human to search legal records and verify a judgment or public record than clicking a computer key a few times, it is often the case that a judgment or public record request for verification is unable to be completed within the 30-day time limit. If this is the case, the credit reporting agency is legally required to remove the judgment entry from your credit history.
You can attempt this process yourself. However, if you would prefer, you can employ a knowledgeable and experienced consumer rights attorney to address this for you. The upside to going this route is that an attorney who practices consumer rights law has typically handled hundreds, and possibly even thousands, of cases of this type.
Learn how to Remove a judgement. Discover the only legal way to remove any questionable credit report judgement at www.creditreportjudgement.com.