A Chapter 7 bankruptcy can stay on your credit report for up to 10 years from the date the bankruptcy was filed, while a Chapter 13 bankruptcy will fall from your report seven years after the filing date. The amount of time you'll see a bankruptcy hold on your credit report depends on the type of bankruptcy. For example, a Chapter 7 bankruptcy stays on your credit report for 10 years from the date the bankruptcy was filed. On the other hand, a Chapter 13 bankruptcy remains on your credit report for only seven years from the filing date.
When you suspect that a bankruptcy in your credit reports is wrong in any way, you can ask the credit bureaus to eliminate it. But if the bankruptcy is correct, you may be stuck with entering your reports for up to a decade. However, even in this situation, you're not doomed to have horrible credit for 10 years. You can work to improve your credit situation as long as bankruptcy remains on your reports.
The steps we've outlined are advanced tactics that, in most cases, are best left to credit repair specialists. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) describes credit reporting limitations for bankruptcy as follows. You may not have a lot of expendable income to hire a professional credit repair company, but you probably don't have the knowledge or emotional bandwidth to address it yourself either. Read on to find out how to remove a bankruptcy from your credit report and other ways you can recover from having a bankruptcy on your credit report.
In each case, qualifying for a mortgage after bankruptcy or buying a car with credit after bankruptcy will prove difficult until you can rebuild your credit. You can challenge bankruptcy by stating an inaccuracy of the information in your credit report or by asking the credit agency how it verified your bankruptcy. But regardless of what your credit score is, when you file for bankruptcy, you're likely to end up with a poor credit rating for a while. Yes, you have certain protections under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), but credit bureaus also have protocols in place to close consumers who have no legitimate disputes.
The most important thing you can do to improve your credit rating after a bankruptcy is to eliminate bankruptcy from your credit report. If you haven't found any inaccuracies in your credit report information, unfortunately there's nothing you can do to eliminate it prematurely, you'll have to wait 7 to 10 years for it to fall off your credit report. Think of it as part of repairing your credit and recovering financial damage related to it. The first thing to do is get a copy of your free credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
If you challenge an item on your credit report and a credit bureau cannot verify that it is correct, you must delete the account from your report. Every time you open or close a credit account, such as a new credit card or loan, all payments you make or don't make will be reported. In a study by the Federal Trade Commission, 25% of consumers found errors in their credit reports that could affect their credit ratings. The FCRA allows credit bureaus to include bankruptcy filings in credit reports for up to 10 years in some cases.
Leave a Comment