When you file bankruptcy you should expect to receive a discharge and a fresh financial start. In a perfect world your credit reports would be properly updated to show that your debts have been discharged. That is important if you wish to reestablish your credit following the bankruptcy. Unfortunately many creditors do not contact the credit bureaus to provide them with the updated status of the discharged debts. If your creditors fail to properly update your credit reports following your bankruptcy, you will probably not be able to get a loan for a house, car or maybe even new credit cards. Most people don’t know their credit reports have not been updated until they are denied credit following their bankruptcy discharge.
Don’t let this happen to you! I advise my clients to pull all three of their credit reports (Equifax, Transunion, and Experian) approximately sixty (60) days after their discharge is entered. If one or more of the creditors who were discharged in your bankruptcy case have failed to properly update your credit reports, you should write a letter to the credit reporting agency to dispute the debt which is improperly being reported. The credit reporting agency will contact the creditor to let them know you have disputed the debt and the creditor should then tell the credit reporting agency to update the report. If they fail to tell the credit reporting agency to update the report, they may be in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and/or the Fair Credit Reporting Act and you should contact an attorney to advise you of your rights. Most attorneys will handle Fair Debt Collection Act and Fair Credit Reporting Act cases on a contingency, which means if you don’t win, they don’t get paid.
Following your bankruptcy case, make sure that your creditors have properly updated your credit reports. If they haven’t, you are not getting the full credit and benefits from the bankruptcy case, and you will have a hard time getting new credit in the future.
