Bad credit reports drop??

[Anonymous]

I married my second husband a little over 2 years ago. His credit really sucks, whereas mine is virtually spotless.

We are thinking about buying another house (and selling our current one) or at least refinancing our currentmortgage, but we have been told it is nearly imopossible with his credit. His ex-wife (whom he divorced and a year later she passed away) had a lot of medical problems and somehow also left his name on a credit card. Therefore, there is a judgment for him for a lot of unpaid bills.

Is there a time limit that these bad reports automatically drop off his credit report? Or will they be there until the "end of time"? Please email me at [email protected] or reply to ths message (and I will try to find it!)

[kb9tbq]

Some Questions for you on this matter:

1. Was there a divorce decree stating who would be responsible for what accounts? Usually in this case when an ex-spouse fails to take care of their given responsibility (they can be taken to court & sued) but not in your case. But still worth making note of, if possible to use later.

Note: Divorce Decrees do not get people out of the responsibilities of the ex-spouses, still have to contact each of the creditors and see what their individual requirements are for servering the relationship.

2. What was the relationship on the account? Joint; Co-signer; or Authorized User?

3. Important - that a copy of the ex-spouses death certificate be obtained to forward copies to all 3 Credit Reporting Agencie making them aware that she has since passed away, also for him to send copy of his drivers license - requesting the CRAs to remove any mixed information which solely belonged to her off of his credit report.

4. Important - that a copy of the death certificate forwarded to the creditors which she had done business with.

Once one spouse passed away, the other could obtain copy of the deceased spouses credit report / by providing copy of the death certificate & marriage certificate. In your case though the only person whom can obtain her credit report will be who ever is the Power of Attorney (with the proof of course). That would of help to know if there was any other creditors out there over looked that are just not showing up at this point on the credit reports of his.

Definately fight with the companies, on the responsibility of the bills that appear after the divorce, in some cases he may be required to forward divorce papers showing that he was no longer responsible for new bills having been incured.

Will definitely want to keep a log of each company and what they are doing in the course of resolving the matter with the bills, dispute all that you can, with the companies. If they don't agree to dismiss the charges, then you will need to take stock of each account showing up on the credit report to begain the clean up process. This will take some time, and there are some other considerations depending on the statute of limitations for each creditor.

You can check the link above on this page for the statute of limitations in your state to find out the time in which creditors for certain types of debt can legally collect.

Now credit reporting is another issue all together, this is the period of time, the accounts can remain listed for other creditors to view, on most everything it will be 7 years. Just a matter of figuring up when the accounts first went delinquent, adding 180-210 days for the charge off. Then adding the 7 years to know how long it stays on the credit report.

This is the technical period, you can do better then this though, if you read up & learn how the reporting works, and what disputing is all about. Just have to take a real good look at the situation with each of these companies first.