Removing a Bankruptcy from Your Credit Reports

Yes, it can be done.

People will say there is no way you can remove a bankruptcy from your credit reports but there is nowhere in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) that says certain items on credit reports cannot be removed. All it says is any information on your credit reports that cannot be verified as accurate must be removed.

If you think about it, this makes sense. Creditors and the credit bureaus make mistakes all the time. For example, a former employer of mine who was also the CEO, President and co-founder of a multi-million dollar company was denied a mortgage loan because his credit reports showed he had filed for bankruptcy. He definitely had not filed for bankruptcy but he did have a very common first and last name (5,537 people in the U.S. share his first and last name according to ww2.howmanyofme.com). In all likelihood, someone had mistakenly added someone else's bankruptcy information to his credit reports.

Saying there is no way to remove a bankruptcy from a credit report would basically be saying this multi-millionaire would not be able to finance a home for ten years because of a clerical error. Obviously this was not the case and after months of dealing with the credit bureaus, the bankruptcy information was completely removed.

So bankruptcies can be removed from credit reports when the information is inaccurate. There should be no disputing this. There is, however, another, greyer area of removing bankruptcies from credit reports.

According to the FCRA, the credit bureaus must also remove any disputed items from credit reports that are unverifiable, including bankruptcies. While any credit repair company is forbidden to even suggest you dispute an item such as a bankruptcy you know is correct, they also know how frequently the courts do not bother confirming negative credit items, especially when they are a few years old. Unlike the profit motivated credit bureaus, the courts generally do not have efficient systems for accessing past data.

Blame the credit repair companies for abusing the system or the courts for their apathy, but the end result remains the same; people with legitimate bankruptcies on their credit reports are managing to get them removed all the time.

Comments on Removing a Bankruptcy from Your Credit Reports

Credit Repair | Late Payments | Collections | Credit Counseling | Debt Help | Sitemap | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Contact Us