Absolutely necessary? No. However, it has this advantage, particularly when the CA is likely not to validate, or is not able to validate, and you want legal leverage to force them to reach an acceptable settlement: You request timely validation from the CA (within 30 days of receiving their initial contact letter, which should include in it your right to dispute), and after confirmation (sent CRRR) that they have received your request (say, 10 days after your green card indicates they got it), you then dispute thru the CRA. Since you disputed and requested validation within 30 days, they are not allowed to assume the debt is yours without providing validation from the original creditor, so they may not continue to collect until they provide that validation to you. If they verify to the CRA without providing validation to you, they are continuing collection, creating a FDCPA violation. If they do not verify, due to not yet having received validation, the CRA should remove the TL. They may, of course, reinsert the TL when they get validation from the OC and provide it to you.
