Legal Question in Bankruptcy in Florida

Re: Satifaction of Judgment

Hello:

I received your question re: prior creditors. I can only give you a general answer as I would need more information to be more specific. You referred to the old creditors as "prior cases". To this, I would ask if they had actually filed law suits in state court or were just debts owed. Also, it matters whether the creditor's case went all the way to a judgment being entered.

It may be that your credit report still shows debts even though those creditors never filed law suits AND were listed on your bankruptcy schedules. You do need to make sure these creditors were listed on the appropriate schedule in your BR case. I am not an expert on credit company reporting so I do not know the exact remedy where they still list a creditor whose debt was discharged in a BR case. I would (after checking my schedules) contact the various credit reporting agencies and ask what can be done. There is a Federal Statute that specifically pertains to our rights against creditor reporting co.s. You may want to search on line for that to review.

If the credtors that are listed still have JUDGMENTS, they do not go away unless you or your attorney filed the appropriate Motion during the pendency of your BR case. If not, you still have some remedies. You may still be able to re-open the BR case and file the Motion. That does cost some money for fees to re-open. I just had a client that did not want to pay to have a judgment removed during her BR case and she neede it removed. We used a State statute to set aside the judgment. I do not recall the stat. # right this second. Basically, we had to show that the creditor was discharged in her BR case and it had to be one year since her discharge. There were no filing fees to bring this type of motion.

Lastly, as long as you listed a creditor on your schedules and an Order of Discharge was entered, the debt is discharged. They cannot try to collect on the debt ever again.

'Hope this helps, Tom Rosenblum.