Letter to CRAs for verification of judgement or removal

[mizzles]

Help!

I have a judgement against me on my CR. It has been paid (satisfied) months ago, however is still showing up as status "unknown"

I plan on writing letters to the CRAs to have this judgement either verified or removed.

My question is does it matter if I wait until the credit report updates to correctly show the judgement as "satisfied" before sending out the letters?

Thanks

Miz

[mizzles]

is anyone able to help with this question?

thanks

[Lian]

Technically, yes, the party who reported the judgment to your CR is responsible for maintaining the accuracy of their reporting, so if the judgment has been satisfied, the reporting party, whoever they are, should have reported this fact to the CRA.

So you would have two options. One, if you know the name of the party who reported this judgment to the CRA, then you can either contact them informally and ask them to update, or file a direct dispute with them.

If you don't know the name of the party who reported the judgment, which is often the case since judgments get into your CR by various ways due to their public record status, you could dispute through the CRA, and make them contact the reporting party. Either way, a dispute will get to the reporting party for their verification of the accuracy of its current status.

Disputes don't necessarily result in the removal if the information. If your dispute is to the accuracy of its current status, then it is not the judgment itself that you would be disputing, but only its payment status. A dispute resolved in your favor would thus result in a correction/update, and not a removal of the judgment.

You can certainly pursue this, but in my opinion, it is not critical. The status of payment on a judgment has no effect on your credit scoring. FICO scores neither the payment nor non-payment of debt. Additionally, the 7 year period for exclusion of the judgment from your CR runs from the date of the judgment, and not from the date it was satisfied, so the lack of reporting of its satisfaction wont affect the date after which it will be excluded from your credit report.

The lack of update thus only affects correction, and not deletion from, your CR, is not relevant to your FICO scoring, and has no effect on its date of exclusion from your CR. Not a huge deal.

[J.A.]

It is relevant if this person wants to purchase a home a car or anything else. If this is so, they will be asked to have this entry show with a zero balance.

[Lian]

I totally agree, JA!
My focus was on the credit scoring aspects, but certainly credit scoring is not the begin and end all! Unpaid debt, particulary if payment as been ordered by a court, is definately a strong negative factor in a credit approval process.