Bankruptcy and Your Credit Report

 The Bankruptcy Court has no jurisdiction over credit reporting agencies. The bankruptcy petition, schedules and plan are public documents and are available to the general public at the Clerk’s Office. Credit reporting agencies regularly collect information from the petitions filed and report the information on their credit reporting services. Under the provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act [15 USC §1681c], the fact that an individual filed a bankruptcy can remain on the credit report no longer than 10 years. According to the Consume r Data Industry Association, if a chapter 13 bankruptcy is successfully completed, the credit reporting industry retains the information for only seven years rather than the ten years allowed by law to encourage debtors to file under that chapter.

Bankruptcies may be taken into consideration by any person reviewing a credit report for the purpose of extending credit in the future. The decision whether to grant you credit in the future is strictly up to the creditor and varies from creditor to creditor depending on the type of credit requested. There is no law which prevents anyone from extending credit to you immediately after the filing of a bankruptcy nor will a creditor be required to extend credit to you. However, a chapter 13 debtor is generally prohibited from incurring credit while the case is pending without the approval of the chapter 13 trustee. The best way for you to obtain credit in the future is to generate adequate and regular income and to pay all of your financial obligations in a timely and responsible manner. Many creditors will not deal with you in the future unless you have already established credit with someone else and demonstrated that you are a reliable debtor. In general, it is recommended that, after the filing of a bankruptcy, one learn to live within his/her income and not request credit which is not absolutely necessary. The Federal Trade Commission has a number of educational publications on its web site to help consumers address credit and financial issues.

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Posted in After Bankruptcy in Oregon and Washington, Bankruptcy Information for Oregon and Washington  |  By: Thomas McAvity

Court Ruling Requires Credit Bureaus To Wipe Away Bills Incurred Before Bankruptcy

In the following new article in the Wall Street Journal, Jane J. Kim describes the recent court ruling in California requiring  credit bureaus to remove debts incurred before the filing of a chapter 7 bankruptcy. Up to the present time, debtors have had to rely on creditors to remove the debts after a bankruptcy filing. Hopefully, Bankruptcy Courts in both Oregon and Washington will quickly follow suit. So that the burden of credit report cleanup can be placed firmly on the credit bureaus

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Posted in After Bankruptcy in Oregon and Washington, Oregon and Washington Bankruptcy Issues in the News  |  By: Thomas McAvity

False Credit Card Entries after Bankruptcy

The last thing anyone needs to be doing after filing bankruptcy is paying debts that they do not owe. The whole idea of bankruptcy is to get a real fresh start. Unfortunately, errors on credit card bills resulting in fresh debt are getting to be pretty commonplace. That being the case, you should always look at your monthly statements. The question is what do you do when you find an unauthorized charge on your bill?

 Contesting errors on your credit card bill may seem a bit daunting, but there are procedures for helping you get things back in order.

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Posted in After Bankruptcy in Oregon and Washington  |  By: Thomas McAvity

How Long is the Bankruptcy on My Credit Report?

Credit reporting agencies usually report bankruptcy information for a period of ten (10) years. This does not mean that your credit rating will remain low for much of that time. Credit scoring takes into account the age of derogatory info, and discounts the value of that information as it ages.  Moreover, because you eliminate all of your unsecured debt in a bankruptcy, your income to debt ratio improves exponentially. 

You should review your credit reports at least every six months to make sure that no innacuracies appear on the reports. For people who have finished a  bankruptcy, the most common error involves creditors failing to update their reporting to reflect that the debt was discharged in bankruptcy and has $0 due.

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Posted in After Bankruptcy in Oregon and Washington  |  By: Thomas McAvity

Avoid Unecessary Fees

Money Magazine once published a great article titled, “35 most outrageous fees (and how to avoid them)“. I thought the article was really educational, and highly recommend it to everyone I know. The sections of the article regarding bank fees and  closing costs were particularly useful.

Posted in After Bankruptcy in Oregon and Washington  |  By: Thomas McAvity