Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

Re: Removal of Dept from Credit Report

This is unfortunately not an uncommon situation. Many dissolution of marriage include significant debt situations and one party or both being in poor financial shape; the failure of one former spouse then rolls onto the other former spouse. Although the decree provided for your former spouse to pay for a debt, that does not affect the creditor's rights to collect the debt from you also. Your recourse then is to collect (be reimbursed) for the debt from your former spouse.

Your hold harmless clause will probably also allow you to claim the reasonable costs of forcing reimbursement. However, if your former spouse files bankruptcy, you can expect that you will not be able to make any recovery, and your remedies may be limited to paying the debt off (or negotiate a resolution with the creditor) or file bankruptcy yourself.