Unpaid Debt Disclosure

[jmc912]

I was just wondering if when applying for a mortgage you need to disclose all unpaid debt to the lender? Even if it's not on your FICO or credit reports? 

A while back my husband was deployed and then went through a bad divorce. I'm sure that he has some unpaid collections, but they have all fallen off of his credit report. If we don't know about them, how would we go about disclosing that to a lender? He had never checked his credit until we met so he doesn't know if he's had collections or what the collections he's had are. 

I know they can pull a different report with more of your history but I heard that no lenders hardly do that or even know about it.

Will the old stuff that fell off his report come back and haunt us when applying for a mortgage? We aren't looking to buy for another year or so. 

[rm3]

Bump. I have the same question as well.

[Walt_K]

If the collection has fallen off of the credit report due to age, it is fairly old.  If it is likely (though not always) outside of statute of limitations.  If it is outside of SOL, I don't think you would need to disclose it. 

You do have an obligation to report something that simply isn't reported that you know about.  But if you don't know about it, you obviously can't report it. 

As far as coming back, yes, it is possible for things to pop up when you apply for a mortgage.  A lot of debt collectors will monitor for things like mortgage applications and that will cause old debts to resurface.  If they were so old that they fell off the report due to the credit reporting time period, then they should not be able to go back on your report.  The CA would have to do something like change the reported date of first delinquency to get it back on your report, which you could dispute.  If it's something that just hasn't reported that you are not aware of, then it could appear.

[Catacam]

I would go Opt Out, you can google to correct web address and then wait and see what is on your report. If it shows up,  you can deal with it then.

Good Luck!

[jmc912]

Great, thank you so much for your input and advice.

I opted out for both my husband and myself!