FAIR CREDIT REPORTING ACT (FCRA)

Unfortunately, creditors don't always obey the law and properly report a person's credit after filing bankruptcy. This is particularly true for those who have filed bankruptcy and surrender real estate.  As consumer lawyers, it's our job to make sure your creditors properly report the bankruptcy discharge. 

Over the years we discovered that creditors often fail to properly report the bankruptcy discharge on their customer's credit reports. You may have already discovered this problem if you tried to buy a house, a car, or to rent an apartment after receiving your bankruptcy discharge. This may be a discharge violation or a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

After researching the problem and learning that almost every consumer coming out of bankruptcy has this problem, we have decided to provide a Discharge Compliance Review which includes a free review of all of your credit reports. Our objective is to determine whether any former creditors are violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the bankruptcy discharge, and/or other applicable state and federal statutes or the common law.

If we find that any of the creditors that were included in your bankruptcy have failed to report that the debt was discharged, we will assist you in preparing a dispute to appropriate credit reporting agencies notifying them of the errors. In the event that they fail or refuse to correct the error, you may be entitled to statutory damages of $100.00 to $1000.00 for each violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. If the error is blatant we may recommend bypassing the dispute process and filing suit in state court for unfair debt collection or financial defamation. If your creditors fail to correctly report the discharge, we will handle the case on a contingency fee basis, which means you owe us nothing unless we recover money for you from your creditors.

When a creditor fails to properly report that your debts have been discharged in bankruptcy, it can cause you to have a much lower credit score than if the debts were properly noted as discharged. When this is not corrected, you may have to pay a much higher interest rate when you buy items on credit such as a car or a new house. This can cost you thousands of dollars on a car loan and tens of thousands of dollars when you buy a house. Sometimes these errors can cause a credit application to be denied simply because your credit report still says that you owe the debts which were discharged.

One of the reasons you filed bankruptcy in the first place was to obtain a fresh start. When your credit report is inaccurate you are denied the full benefits of the bankruptcy discharge.

As consumer lawyers, we can assist you in pulling your credit reports when you come in for your free Discharge Compliance Review, or you can obtain a free copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus through the website www.annualcreditreport.com. Congress ordered the credit bureaus to allow everyone one free credit report from each of the three credit bureaus per year, so you should take advantage of that opportunity.

Please contact our office to arrange your free Discharge Compliance Review which will include a review or your credit reports as well any correspondence, telephone calls, emails, faxes, and text messages you might have received from creditors or collection agencies trying to collect a discharged debt. It is well worth the time to find out whether or not your credit report is accurate or if creditors have been illegally accessing your credit reports. If your creditors are failing to report the bankruptcy discharge properly, we can help you and if they are still trying to collect their debt, we take action to force them to honor your discharge. Best of all, your creditors will have to pay our attorneys fees for solving these problems and may have to pay you damages if they have violated the law.