Why do I still show a judgment on my credit report?
Emily asked:
I’ve had a judgment on my credit report for 8 years which was paid 8 years ago, the same time I received the judgment. Don’t the credit agencies normally pull judgments off credit report after 7 years? Can anyone with experience in credit matters direct me to a form letter I can write to the credit agencies along with this rule? Thank you.
Brent
I’ve had a judgment on my credit report for 8 years which was paid 8 years ago, the same time I received the judgment. Don’t the credit agencies normally pull judgments off credit report after 7 years? Can anyone with experience in credit matters direct me to a form letter I can write to the credit agencies along with this rule? Thank you.
Brent
Tags: 8 Years, Credit Report, Judgments
July 8th, 2009 at 3:53 am
Georgia
I worked in lending and finance for a long time and alot of people have the misconception that things come off of the credit report after a certain amount of years. This is not true. In fact, sometimes, they stay on much much longer. Especially bad debt like a judgement.
Here is what you can try to do: Go to each of the credit bureau’s websites and pull the report for free. You can do it for free with each once a year. The websites are,, and
When you have the report, they will all have a link under the judgement, or somewhere on the site while you are viewing the report, to dispute things. Dispute the item and when it asks for a reason, put that the account is too old.
It may come off, it may not. Unfortuantly, it’s one of those things that you don’t have alot of control over. This is why it is so important to maintain good credit. That way, only good things get stuck on there forever.
Hope this helps you.
July 11th, 2009 at 2:22 am
Carrie
I had about 10 of these on my report, you don’t need to write them nothing all you do is go to
and get your free yearly report with no strings attach and next to each item just click dispute and within a few days they will all be gone, remember you have to submit all your dispute at once cause the system won’t let you come back like the nextday and submit more ok, also as soon as 1 agency knows about the change they will notify the others if they don’t already know about it
July 13th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Maurice
judgements stay on for sometimes up to 10 years!!!
July 14th, 2009 at 3:53 am
Todd
Here is the rule under the Fair Credit Reporting Act Running of Reporting Period - Section 605 [15 U.S.C. ยง 1681c]
Lawsuits And Judgments - Seven years or until the governing statute of limitations has expired, whichever is longer.
Most states have a statute of 10 years and if not paid, can be renewed.
Use the following link to find your states SOL for reporting judgments.
If the state statue has expired, send a dispute to the CRA’s via certified mail/return receipt. You can also find out the proper way to dispute at the following FTC website
Hope this helps answer your question.