Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Louisiana

Re: Credit File Information

When a bad debt is sued on and a judgment is issued, it actually can appear twice on your credit bureau report. Once as the actual trade line as a bad debt and then again as a Public Records entry of the judgment itself.

The Judgment on your credit bureau report has been pulled from the Public Records of your county. If you dispute the Judgment, and the Judgment is actually recorded in the Public Records, then it will remain as it is. Public Records are not updated when you make a payment, otherwise the Public Records updates would overwhelm the Clerk's Office. Further, the Clerk's Office is under no legal duty to contact the creditor to get the current balance every time a dispute comes in. The Judgment in the Public Records is reported at its original judgment amount until the judgment is paid in full.

That being said, if you have a trade line entry from the creditor (meaning the creditor has an entry other than in the Public Records section of your report), then you may send a dispute through to update the amount on the trade line. Although the creditor is under no obligation to update the credit bureaus on the balance of a debt once it has charged off as a bad debt, some will update the balance if requested. If you dispute the entry through the bureaus, be sure to limit your dispute to the balance only, otherwise the creditor will most likely just argue that the bad debt is valid, instead of focusing on the amount owed.

To access your free credit report, you can go to www.annualcreditreport.com. DO NOT CONFUSE THIS SITE WITH OTHERS. You will wind up paying for a monitoring service you likely don't need.

For more information about your credit and how the bureaus work, check out the Credit section of our website at www.LaBellaLaw.com.

Re: Credit File Information

Yes, it's disputable. You can't legally dispute that there was a judgment in that amount against you, but you can dispute the amount still due. If I were you, I'd just dispute the whole thing. Maybe it will all come off your credit. Just say, "It's being improperly reported on my credit."