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Court Mandates Credit File Cleanup
A recent court decision requires the three major
credit-reporting bureaus — Experian Group Ltd., Equifax Inc., and TransUnion
LLC — to clean up the credit files of consumers who have filed for Chapter 7
bankruptcy. These bureaus are still reporting old debts as
active on consumers’ credit reports even though they were wiped clean in a
bankruptcy filing. The U.S. District Court for the Central District
of California gave the bureaus until Oct. 1 to revamp their systems.
Consumers who have gone through Chapter 7
bankruptcy should request copies of their credit reports at a website like
AnnualCreditReport.com
and make sure that the old debuts have been removed. The court-mandated changes come at a time when
more consumers are filing for bankruptcy amid rising loan defaults and
tighter credit standards. U.S. consumer bankruptcy filings jumped 29.2
percent to 96,413 in August, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, Jane J. Kim
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