Hi from Vanessa in Florida

Hi, my name is Vanessa, I'm in Florida, and my credit got destroyed due to 'a series of unfortunate events,' that started with a high risk pregnancy in 2006, which put me on bed rest for 7 months and then led to the birth of a preemie who spent the first 6 weeks of his life in a LEVEL III NICU. All that time I couldn't work, and even though I had great insurance, between the deductibles for myself and the baby, and what my insurance didn't cover, I just didn't have the cash available to pay the bills. But it would be another year and a half (spring of 2007) before the baby's health and my health recovered enough for me to get back to work.

By the time I was able to get back to work, my business, real estate investing, had shifted from being non-credit driven, to being credit driven. Suddenly, lenders who used to fund my deals based solely on the equity in the property, now wanted 650 or better credit scores... which I no longer had.

My sons' father decided to walk out just as this happened, and took with him my truck that I used for my side business, hauling, so I couldn't even do that anymore, and because we had lived together, the police decided it was a 'civil matter,' and never reported it as 'Stolen', so instead of getting it paid off by the insurance, he left it somewhere until it got repo'd and I wound up with that on my credit too.

Oh yea, and I was also 2 months pregnant with our 2nd child when he walked out.

And I was denied all state assistance because I still owned properties, even though they were all uninhabitable, in various stages of foreclosure, and certainly were not going to 'sell' at that time. So that pregnancy was filled with trips to the ER, racking up medical bills that I couldn't pay.

Without being able to make my living, I went totally broke. I eventually lost all the properties I already owned, except for my homestead property, which I'm still in, but that's another story. I couldn't even pay my regular bills. Over the next 2 and a half years, the only work I could find was freelance work, and it was just a daily struggle for survival. If I got sick, it was a trip to the ER because I didn't have the money for a doctor visit or for prescription.

Then in 2009, I met the man I am married to now, and life started to get a little better. But I still had all those bills hanging over my head and even our combined income was still 'hand to mouth.' There was just nothing left over to pay off all those old bills. But over the past year, things have gotten much better, and this year he'll be getting a new certification that will put him in a job that will double his salary by the end of the year.

I had considered BK7, but here's why I didn't: My homestead property.

The mortgage on this house is in my first husband's name. My name is only on the deed, not the mortgage, and he just wanted to let them take the house. I had stopped making the payments on it in 2007, but as of the end of 2010, they hadn't foreclosed, and then their (the banks) attorney was indicted on federal robo signing charges. Well, when that happens, the bank has to obtain new counsel. But at the end of 2011, they still hadn't done so. So the courts sent them a letter giving them 60 days to respond and tell the courts what they are going to do with this case that's been sitting on their docket for 6 years, and if they didn't respond in 60 days, then the case would be dismissed.

Well, they didn't respond within the 60 days, and the judge issued a "Master Order of Dismissal." Currently, there is not even so much as a Lis Pendens filed against this property. (And all these years the mortgage company has continued to pay the taxes and the premiums on the forced place insurance too.)

I recently read that the SOL on Foreclosures in Florida is 5 years from the date of default, and was told that since we're past that SOL now they can't file for foreclosure, that all they can do is hold the 'lien' on the property and get their money if and when I sell the house. I've also read that every month I haven't made a payment starts a NEW 'Date of Default', but so far the bank has not made any moves whatsoever. Would love to know if anyone has any experience with this...???

Initially, the plan was to stay in this house for as long as possible and then file the CH 7, which would have bought me an extra 6 months to a year of not having to pay rent or a mortgage, but as we come into 2014, it's now been 7 years since the bulk of the bills from the disaster of my life were incurred and defaulted on, and lots of stuff is now going to just fall off my credit report. So it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to ruin that with a BK, especially since if the bank ever does foreclose on this house, that foreclosure won't hit my own credit report anyway, and I can't see screwing up what could be 'good' again in a year or two, with a BK.

So far, I've seen my Experian and TransUnion Reports. I have to mail away for the Equifax report because their online security questions can't identify me.

The biggest bulk of my debts is scheduled for deletion between this month (Feb 2014) and March of 2015. I started this year 70 grand in the hole, and by March of next year, it will be down to $10 grand just from the stuff that's dropping off.

The rest of the bills will come off anywhere between 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. (And most of these are pretty small... 2 at $1,200, 3-4 at $500, and the rest are little piddly $59 and $89 type amounts.)

My plan was to start with the stuff that wouldn't be deleted until 2019, and either try PFD if the amount was small enough, or a payment plan to pay them off.

Question: If I ask for a payment plan, what are the chances that the creditor will agree to delete once the account is paid in full?

It's probably going to take me over a year to pay off the debts that aren't scheduled for deletion until after 2015 anyway, so it seems that the most prudent course of action is for me to just let those that will fall off by next year do so, and concentrate on the stuff that won't be 'falling off' later than that.

Other than that, my biggest concern is the debts that were charged off or sold... some of them won't come off until between 2016-2019 So they are still showing my defaults to them. Even if I can do something with the new owner of the debt, those old debts are still going to be there and I'm wondering what, if anything, I can do about them, except for DV....

I read through the board last night, and got some great information, and I have printed out the glossary to hang on my wall over my desk.

I've taken the advice of someone to first opt out, then delete all old addresses, then work on medical stuff, then the other stuff. And like someone said last night, I'm going to take things slowly so I don't get overwhelmed. I know my credit didn't get ruined over night and I don't expect to fix it overnight.

After 7 years, I finally see a light at the end of this tunnel. My husband will have a better job, and I'll have a credit score that would finally get me back into real estate investing, and we will be able to buy another house, of our own, and give our kids a good life.

The information shared here has been invaluable to me. I'd like to thank everyone for sharing so much.

I'll keep everyone posted with updates to my progress.

 

Thank you mindcrime. I have been devouring all the useful information I found here since I found the board last night. It's a wonder I was able to get to sleep. LOL.

Hubby has EMT training and is going for a Hyperbaric Chamber Tech cert this year. We discovered this 'field' when he went into the hospital after an infection wouldn't heal and we learned he had diabetes. The nurse at the wound care center was talking with us about his plans to be an RN, and she suggested the HBC Tech field. It's apparently exploding, due to the newly found benefits of hyberbaric chambers enriching the oxygen in the blood, which helps healing- something that diabetics struggle with.

(He also completely changed his eating habits after that and is now able to control his diabetes without meds. YAY!)

Because he was already an EMT (just needs to renew his license) he can walk right into the HBCT training program and complete it, and his externship, in as little as 6 months. So that's what he's doing this year, while I work on repairing both our credit. (His isn't nearly as messy as mine, so it should be a lot easier.)

I figure that by the end of 2014, he'll be working in that field, and then by the end of 2016 I'll have repaired our credit and he'll have had 2 years on the job, so that's when we'll be able to buy another house of our own.

I also have a shot at a job working for the schools, which, combined with my freelance work, will help us to pay down our debts, and get secured cc's and loans to start rebuilding our credit too.

For years, I was just waiting for the bank to foreclose on this house so I could file BK7 to buy 6 -12 extra months in my house and then put all of this behind me, but then one day, it was 7 years after the SHTF, and so much was going to come off my credit report that BK7 just didn't make sense anymore. Even if they do ever foreclose, that's not going to even show up on my credit report.

This year, I'm changing so many things. I even started couponing, and growing our own food and preserving it. Anything that I can do to make my finances easier to manage, I will do. I don't ever want to live the way I have been living for the past 7 years, again.

I will list the accounts, one or two at a time, as you suggested, as soon as I have all 3 credit reports, and I make a spreadsheet to track everything. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

 

Btw, what does YMMV stand for?

 

ahhh. thank you. LOL

 

Glad to hear you got back on track, mindcrime.