Removing Civil Judgement

[Anonymous]

I recently paid a civil judgement in full and am expecting a satisfaction of debt letter in the mail any day now.  I spoke to someone in the Clerk of Courts office and they said that if I bring the letter in and pay $5 it will be removed (I specifically asked for removal).  I just want to make sure that this is the case as I am going to have someone else do this for me due to my work schedule.  I have read on here that the courts will only update public records to indicate that the judgement has been paid and then it is up to the credit bureaus to update from there, so I should dispute with proof of payment.  Has anyone had experience with this?  Hoping to get a mortgage approval soon and between this and making my final payment on defaulted student loans, I should be ready to go (fingers crossed)!

[Anonymous]

Hi, I had to do the same. I paid for my warrant of satisfaction. But I asked the company for an emailed letter so I could forward it to the Lender to have on file. Once I got the letter (2 weeks later) I typed up a letter saying please update my credit report and delete this account. Also please send me a copy of filing for my records, (I had to include a self stamped envelope and $35 MO here in NJ) It took 3 weeks to get the stamped letter from the courthouse, along with a copy of my letter asking for deletion (there was a checkmark on it). When the Lender's credit agency looked at my report they had some odd new comment in there saying my account was not satisfied and I still owed money (I settled for a lesser amount). The lender was like WTH, so I called EVERYONE (creditors law office, lender, and the credit agency at the same time) to have this fixed. The law office was like where the heck did they even get that information. I assume its been fixed. I still see the original debt on my report and will wait to dispute, after this process. Becuase I was told you can not get a mortgage if you have items in dispute. So I will upload my warrant of satisfaction and the letter with the filed mark on saying it should be deleted. If its not deleted after I close.