Hi All, I've perused this site quite a bit as a guest and the information and help you give is invaluable. I apologize in advance for my first post not being one of help to others but asking for help for myself. Let me get to the skinny here...My wife and I, married just recently, are in the process of trying to adopt a baby. But, lo and behold, my credit stinks as I've had some extremely difficult times in the last few years with the loss of a job and some extenuating circumstances with my parents that drained me financially. And her credit contains a bankruptcy from a few years ago. Our goal is to try and clean this credit mess up and then get a loan to help with the adoption fees. My main concern right now are four credit cards that have been charged off in the last year. The balances range from $1500 up to $7000. Discover (the largest balance) is being a complete pest but they continue to allow me to pay them a little each month which keeps them from filing a judgment against me. I live in a garnishable state and want to avoid that if at all possible. Not to mention, I don't know how that will effect the adoption. What can I do with these accounts? I'd like to make good on the debts I owe if at all possible. I was hoping I could get some sort of temporary "Credit Stay" so I could get the loan for the adoption and settle these with the money leftover. Any creative ideas out there? My wife also has just about everything negative on her credit report imaginable due to some medical problems she had. She has a judgment, discharged bankruptcy (a year and half old) and student loans that were in default. Any advice on what I should tackle first? Anyone have any specific positive experiences in dealing with this kind of stuff? Thanks again for your help -- sorry for all the questions. Snax
I would start by first disputing the accounts with the CRA you may get lucky and some may get removed. if your debt is past the SOL( statute of limitations ) in your state I call it a safe zone to send validation requests to the CA and verification requests to the creditors see what they come up with. and if they don't have the proof the acct must get deleted as well leaving less issues to deal with. CAUTION : if you do this and you are still within the SOL and the collector has proof it may cause a creditor to force you into payment terms, if you are unprepared and can not pay they can seek legal action against you and seek to obtain a judgmnet making matters worse unless you are prepared to deal. to request validation from the CA and verification from a creditor you need to send a letter by CMRRR ( certified mail return reciept requested) and put that tracking # on your letter for your protection so you need to get the postal slip prior to writing your letter . send your letter and wait, and see what happens there are further procedures from there when they do or don't respond keep us updated and we will help ya out from there. BTW there are examples of letters in the home page on this site constructed by various members if you need an example to follow. LBROWN can you post your newbies link for them to read plz I hope this helps good luck
