Starting July 1, 2017, important rules for credit reporting agencies have changed, and the changes may have a big impact on both the curious consumer who just wants to check his score, and the debtor seriously thinking about filing for bankruptcy.
Going forward, civil judgments and tax liens data will no longer be reported by the three major credit-reporting bureaus that do not include three of the following data points: name, address, social security number or date of birth.
That means that an estimated 11 million Americans will see some lien and judgment information vanish from their credit reports.
Good news or bad news? If you are a debtor, it might make you feel better. It might even make the FICO score go up a bit.
But not including the liens or court judgments doesn’t make them go away. That’s potentially a problem if you file for bankruptcy, because debts that aren’t listed aren’t discharged, and your bankruptcy lawyer might not know to list them if they are not on your report.
The is a solution, however. Bankruptcy lawyers have access to specially created credit reports that will still have the debts “missing” from the free reports. The catch is, these complete credit reports aren’t free. I use CIN Legal Infonet for mine, where the price starts at $33.00.
by Doug Beaton
Painting: Atropos, by Matthew Cheyne.