Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act information can be included in your credit reports for seven years. But there are exceptions to this rule:
- Information about criminal convictions may be reported without any time limitation.
- Bankruptcy information may be reported for 10 years.
- Information reported in response to an application for a job with a salary of more than $75,000 has no time limit.
- Information reported because of an application for more than $150,000 worth of credit or life insurance has no time limit.
- Information about a lawsuit or an unpaid judgment against you can be reported for seven years or until the statute of limitations runs out, whichever is longer.
Here is more input:
- The seven year statute of limitations on information listed on your credit report figures from the date of last activity.
- According to the FCR Act Section 605 a debt can remain on a credit report for 7 years and 180 days after the delinquency that caused the account to go bad. Sometimes creditors will sell their bad accounts or post information on the credit report to show an activity date that is less than 7 years. THIS IS PROHIBITED. (I ended up having a judgment removed, the collection accounts removed, and the original creditor account removed.) In short, the time clock starts on the month the original delinquency started by the original account, regardless of whether the account has been sold to a collection agency, was paid at a later date, or a judgment was placed. The FTC has ruled this to be the law when it comes to time periods. If the credit reporting agencies are showing an account on your record that originally went bad more than seven years ago, regardless of date of last activity, dispute the information and they will have to remove it. The reasoning behind this is similar to chapter 13 bankruptcy which stays on your credit for just 7 years instead of chapter 7. The courts have ruled if you did not file a bankruptcy and had several bad credit items they would strictly fall in under the chapter 13 guidelines. I ended up paying on debts that were less than 7 years old and had all the collections, judgments, and original creditors of more than 7 years removed. Even though the judgment was only 2 years old and unpaid and the collection account was only 3 years old, they were still bound to the time line of the original creditor. This regulation prevents accounts from staying on your credit forever.