Hello, I'm a newbie here! I've been doing alot of research but still have a few questions i haven't yet found answers to. Here's the scoop: I was evicted from an apartment in September 2005 that i only lived in for 2 and a 1/2 months. This now shows on my credit report that i owe over 5k. My CR shows the date of last activity as 11/05 and submitted to collections 2/06 and date updated 10/08. The SOL for my state is 4 years but what date do i go by? Nobody from a CA has contacted me about this collection in about 3 years. Should i wait for the SOL date to try and deal with this? Is there a process i should follow that would entitle me to have this removed from my credit report after the SOL date. Also, my roommate that was on the rental agreement with me, never actually signed it. So if the CA has the contract but it only has one signature, do i have any advantage? I also have a few other derogatory accounts that i would like to contest and they are all at least 4 years old. Will the 4 year Statute of Limitations help me in getting these removed or do i need to do the whole validation process? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Tim
If there was a court case, there may be a judgement, so you would go by the SOL on judgments in the state where the court case was. If there's no judgment, then it's possible that the SOL is up in the Aug/Sep '09 time frame (if you're looking at the right SOL ... many states have different SOLs for different classifications of contract types and you may not have your classification correct). Judgment SOLs are usually a lot longer than SOLs for bringing suit in the first place, and folks with judgments often start looking at Chapters 7 and 13 for relief unless they've moved to a different state and the judgmentholder is entirely quiescent.
Thank you for the response flacorps. There was no court case and there isn't a judgement. I live in California and the SOL is 4 years on a written contract. So you are saying that i go by the date of the eviction to use as my SOL date, correct? Should i wait until the 4 year mark then to pursue resolving this account so that i do not wake a sleeper and get taken to court? I'm still curious too if anyone could help with my rental agreement question. The rental agreement was drawn up with requests for both our signatures. The front office called my roommate many times over the couple months we lived there and asked him to come sign the rental agreement, but he never did. Does this mean that i am solely responsible...or...is the contract void because it only contains one of the two necessary signatures? Thanks in advance for any info/advice. PS - This site is amazing! I get hooked some nights and spend 6 or 7 hours on here. Then i have dreams about my credit...it's kinda strange!
The date they got you out may not be the date the SOL began to run. How long were you delinquent before you left? SOL could already be expired. Also, you need to find out whether you are in the First Advantage Saferent database (fka California Unlawful Detainer Registry). That's a private database that can make it very difficult for you to rent in California.
