4 Options for Getting a Judgment Removed From Your Credit Report
You have four options for attempting to remove judgments from your credit record. We recommend that you attempt these strategies in the order that we have listed them since we have ordered them based on their efficacy.
1. Seek court approval.
Your credit report must have accurate and reliable information. The Fair Credit Reporting Act compels a creditor to delete a negative entry if it cannot be verified.
As a result, one of the first steps to removing a judgment from your credit history is to request that the judgment be validated by the court. Send a letter to the court that gave the verdict with your personal information and the court case number to obtain validation. Obtain confirmation from the court that your judgment was rendered.
You can ask the credit bureau to remove the judgment off your record if the court does not react, fails to confirm the case, or states that it cannot authenticate it.
2. Submit an appeal.
You can also submit an appeal to have the judgment vacated, which will erase the judgment from your credit record. A vacated judgment is one that has been dismissed by the court, implying that it never transpired legally. As a result, it has no bearing on your consumer credit score or public records.
A judge will assess your case and decide whether to vacate or uphold the first verdict if you file an appeal. In the most successful situations, the creditor does not appear at all during the appeal, resulting in a default decision in your (the defendant’s) favor.
If you win your appeal, your decision will be vacated, and you will no longer be financially impacted. While appeals aren’t always successful, they’re worth a try if you want to repair your credit.
If you fail to respond to a court summons, a default judgment might be used against you.
3. File a dispute with the credit bureaus over the judgment.
You can also attempt challenging the judgment with the three credit bureaus if appealing the decision with the court does not work. Credit reports must, once again, only contain correct information. If you discover any errors in your credit history, you can ask the credit reporting companies to delete the offending item entirely.
We recommend getting a copy of all three of your credit reports and thoroughly inspecting them for any discrepancies, unauthorized items (from identity theft), or typographical errors. Keep an eye out for errors like these:
- Dates that are incorrect
- Misspellings
- Incorrect dollar amounts
If you discover any of these typographical mistakes or other inaccuracies, the next step is to file a certified postal dispute letter to the credit bureau. The inaccuracies you discovered and the improvements you’d like the credit bureau to make should be detailed in your letter.
Within 30 days of your disagreement, the bureau must establish that the information on your report is correct. If it is unable to confirm the data, it will be removed from your report.
As a result, if your credit report contains any mistakes related to your judgment, you may request that the judgment be deleted.
4. Make a payment and wait for it to be removed from your credit report.
If none of the other options work, you’ll have to pay the judgment and wait for it to be removed from your credit report.
Creditors in certain places may cancel judgments if you pay them. In some cases, it might take up to seven years for a decision to be made. Paying the judgment as soon as possible, on the other hand, might turn it into a “satisfied” judgment, which is more appealing to potential lenders.