Hi, My name is David, I'll be completely up front in my younger years with the Army I made some really really dumb decisions years later here I sit at 40k in debt. Problem was I got injured and had a good year or two of waiting on VA disability to clear, in that period I went into MAJOR debt problems. I do not have any idea on what to do, I am on 100% disability with three kids and a wife in school. I do not make a ton of money and really am trying to figure out even my first step to take to get my Debts figured out so I can move my family into something better in life....So I myself can move on and better myself. I really appreciate any help I cget and thank everyone that takes the time to read this.
dbear - First and foremost, welcome to the forum. It's awesome that you've taken responsibility for your actions and are looking to better the lives of you and your family. Kudos to you. OK, the first thing I would recommend is to get your hands on your credit report. You can request to receive your one legally-obligated free credit report per year here: https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp ... This is a legitimate website and there are no "free trial" required or anything like that. Once you've got your report, the next thing to do is identify which debts are set to "expire" via your state's statute of limitations. When I say expire, I mean that legally a collection agency or original creditor can no longer legally sue you for these debts. You still owe the money and ignoring these debts can be detrimental to your credit score long term, but at least you have peace of mind knowing that once the SOL has run out you'll have the law on your side. Here's where to find your state's statute of limitations in terms of credit card debt: Statutes of limitation for credit card debt collection, all 50 states You can figure out when your SOL are going to run out by identifying the Date of First Delinquency (DOFD) on your old debts. That's the date that determines your SOL. Once you have that info, I would then prioritize paying back your "newest" debts rather than the oldest, since these are the ones most likely to take action against you. In the meantime, pay your debts on time each and every month to keep from further hurting your credit score. And please, follow up so we can give you a hand on your next move once you have the above info. For now, these are initial first steps I would take.
Ok, Got my credit report, I have two questions now, If I find charges that are deff not mine, They are two diff hospitals from er? I do not even live there in the area and I use the VA hospitals er which of course is free for me. How do I go about getting these removed, my license was stolen and that is obviously what it was used for. Second question is, what does it mean on my report that the item will come off on 11/2013, does this mean it drops completely or should I not worry about paying these ones off for now? Sorry to be such a "newb" to this but I deff appreciate all of the help, so far it's really helped....heck I would of never knew I had accounts that are not really mine.
The first step with any account that you question. (a) send a letter to them either via fax or CMRRR. (b) when you know they've received it, send a dispute of the account to the credit reporting agencies. If they are verified, then you would need to demand that the hospital er provide you with documentation including your signature. If you have that, then you can see whether or not it is actually fraud from the stolen license, or if it is a misreporting (someone couldn't read a SSN or DoB on the form, or entered it wrong) or 'skip tracing' (we want a DGDBear's information, and instead of DGDBear's information they get dgdbear's information) error.
