Hi everyone- I have learned so much from this board and others like it... and I have read a lot of conflicting information and wanted to see how you all think I should approach my own situation. For the first time ever, I pulled my 3 reports to see what was on them. To my full surprise, with the exception of equifax reporting my mortage twice, they were all 100% accurate! Amazing huh. Well, here is the reason my scores are so low: In the process of paying all bills ontime and going through a divorce and keeping my house and doing necessary home improvements, etc. I have maintained a perfect credit record (no lates)except for two credit cards. One for $8500 the other for 16k. Both haven't been paid on for quite awhile and both charged off as bad debt with balances oweing. I realized I couldn't pay this back so I talked to a bk lawyer. I qualify except for the fact I own my car outright and I would have to get a car equity loan (at 30% ouch) so I didn't have so much equity in my car. I don't want to get another loan just to file bk over two lousy accounts when everything else is absolutely perfect adn ruin my credit for 10 years. That just seems stupid. Settlement is my other option. At the moment, I don't have any CAs after me. One piece of advice I've received is no one is after me now, don't do anything. Time is on my side. Put my car in someone elses name so if a law suit happens to come my way, they can't come after my car. This does make sense to me... I'll probably sign my car over to a good friend I can trust, but I'm going to want to get a new house in a couple of years, I want my scores to be higher than the 566 they are now. And 7 years waiting for them to fall off is a looooooong time from now. So, if I go about contacting the OCs with the intent to settle, first - will this really improve my scores when I settle? And second, how can I go after the settlement and aim for removal from credit reports when it is very obvioulsy valid debt? Any advice on the steps to take would be so awesome. Thanks a million to all of you. Qofther
The petition for bankruptcy will ask if you have given any gifts within the past year. Signing the car over to someone won't work. About your car though...sometimes the trustee will allow you to make payments for the amount that is not exempt. What is the value of your car? The exemption is $2,400 for one person. Also, if you take out a loan using your car as equity, it may cause problems as well because the trustee won't like that you are making more debt just before filing for bankruptcy. Just worked on a case where a lady had gotten a credit card and ran it up 67 days before filing. You aren't supposed to have opened new accounts within 60 days, but that doesn't mean the trustee will accept it. This particular trustee said it wouldn't fly and so now this lady won't be able to include that particular account in bk. Just some thoughts... L
I needed to get $3500 out against my car. I have pretty much decided to avoid bk as much as possible and settle with the two bad accounts. I honestly can't believe I don't have any CAs pounding down my door with such high balances. My question now is what is the best way to get these accounts off my report sooner than later? Do I sit back and wait for a CA, ask them to validate and hope to snag them on that? Approaching the OCs will most likely validate no problem, but how could I work out a settlement and removal at the same time? I was thinking about giving the OCs my sob story, wanting to settle in good conscience, if I settle now, they would at least get something instead of nothing with me filing bk... blah blah, but how do I clinch it with removal? Just hope they screw up somewhere so I can threaten to sue them for removal? Any ideas?
