First, don’t worry. Remember – most, if not all, of your debts are on file somewhere – in your consumer credit reports. It is possible to pull your credit report from each of the three main consumer credit reporting agencies and find out what your creditors have reported with regard to what, and whom, you owe. These three agencies are Experian, Trans Union, and Equifax.

But what if you think you already know exactly who you owe and how much you owe them, prior to filing for bankruptcy? It is still a good practice to pull your credit reports before you file, anyway.

You should pull your credit reports because you may have forgotten a debt, a creditor may be reporting that you owe more than you think you do, and/or one or more of your debts may have been sold to a debt buyer without your knowledge. This is just a good due diligence practice.

The official site for free credit reports from all three credit reporting agencies is annualcreditreport.com. You don’t need to use the ones you see advertised on TV – they will cost you some money, possibly every month. So watch out what services you might be signing up for when you are surfing the net looking for credit report sources.

If you are going to hire an attorney to help with the bankruptcy, speak to that attorney first before you go to the trouble of pulling the reports, unless you just want to see them anyway. The attorney may already have a credit reporting service they want to use. Tell the attorney that you want a copy of the credit report they pull for you. Or, they may want you to pull your own reports first, before starting on your bankruptcy case. Different lawyers go about the preparation of a bankruptcy case in different ways.

Photo by Adam Baker.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The answer is that bankruptcy information can stay on your report for 10 years. Most other types of negative information can be reported for 7 years.

Usually, a Chapter 7 stays on a credit report for 10 years while a Chapter 13 stays on a report for 7 years.

The Federal Trade Commission has a website explaining how to get free copies of your credit reports from the 3 major credit reporting companies. You should check your reports on a regular basis to make sure they do not contain any false information.

It is still possible to build a positive credit report even with a bankruptcy on your record, so long as you act carefully and methodically. If you’ve ever received credit card offers before, you are likely to receive them again after your bankruptcy.

If your goal is to build good credit, it’s worth your while to consider the post-bankruptcy card offers that you receive with an eye toward building a record of consistently and fully repaying an open line of credit.

If you are in New Jersey and considering Chapter 7 bankruptcy, please call me for a free telephone consultation at 201-676-0722.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.