Chapter 13 Bankruptcy

[nicki527]

I recently filed a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy and am wondering will I have to wait until it's discharged before I can begin rebuilding my credit?  Will I see my credit score slowly go up as time goes by?

[Anonymous]

Technically speaking on the law, you are prohibited from incurring any new debt or credit until discharged unless you obtain permission from the trustee.

This can be a challenge since discharge is 3 to 5 years away.  Speak to your attorney on the subject.

As far as cleaning up credit, such as GW, disputing innaccurate items, etc....that can be and should be done at your earliest ability.

[Anonymous]

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txjohn wrote: Technically speaking on the law, you are prohibited from incurring any new debt or credit until discharged unless you obtain permission from the trustee.

This can be a challenge since discharge is 3 to 5 years away.  Speak to your attorney on the subject.  As far as cleaning up credit, such as GW, disputing innaccurate items, etc....that can be and should be done at your earliest ability.

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+1.  New debt or credit can be grounds for dismissal - not a good thing.

Pull your credit reports and make sure they're accurate - especially that those accounts IIB are reporting as such rather than still late.  We had MANY discrepencies on our reports during BK - had an opportunity to refi our ARM mortgage (that would've been good) but couldn't do that effectively because of the inaccuracies on our reports.  So, Do keep working on cleaning up credit.

 If you have a mortgage or other account outside of BK, those payments made on time will help you build while in BK.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Dear BeamMeUp,

this is my first post...I noticed your post regarding mortgage paid outside of chapter 13...which is the case with me. Here is my question, wondering if you can answer. I filed Oct 07, 13. Bankruptcy paid outside of mortgage. It took Countrywide/Bank of America, approximately 6 to 9 months before they even put up the "bankruptcy flag" on my account. But even with the flag, they were still reporting me to all three bureaus as "paid as agreed" which I was. I was never and have never been late. Everything was fine, my credit scores were getting much better...Then, through the credit monitoring that I have,

I found out that as of oct 2009, they are reporting my mortgage as "included in bankruptcy". This is showing up on equifax and experian as a "potentially negative item" and my scores have dropped because of this! They are reporting me as "paid as agreed" on transunion. One of the bureaus states that a creditor can report you this way if you fail to meet the terms of your agreement with them. Perhaps they can report me this way simply because I am in a chapter 13, even though I pay them, not my trustee. I am just confused and thought I'd post about this. I was attempting to get a mortgage mod with BofA, which did not happen, and we are ok with it...able to make the payment...but i am wondering if the "bankruptcy audit" they told me they were doing at the time of trying to get the mod..resulted in this negative reporting issue. I did call them and ask about this, the woman in the bankruptcy dept stated they were not supposed to report me at all while I was in chapter 13.....But per the info in your post, still do and should?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Thank you

[Anonymous]

Hey Michigan,

I lived in the lovely mitten-state of MI for several years - and in fact DH was just there yesterday.  Beautiful!

I hope some more experienced posters will respond to this, because I'm unclear of how it should report.

Our mortgage did show up as IIB but we had an arrearage with them that we paid off in the BK.  However, after our BK was discharged, we tried to correct some inaccurate reporting on this account (not FICO wise - just trying to clear up some of the inaccurate balances they were showing) - this triggered a full-blown internal review; and the mortgage account dropped off of two of the CRA's, and reported clean on the third one.  Our loan was with Litton, and if they would have been internally clean, we would not have had to file the Ch 13 in the first place - they were a nightmare to work with.

Your case is certainly different - so I doubt I've been very helpful.  Other posters will chime in.  Best of luck to you - and kudos for staying on top of your credit reports while in BK.  BTW, the mortgage broker we tried to work with while in BK was very ill-informed regarding our credit reports - wish I would have found this forum back then!

[Anonymous]

Dear BEAM  thanks so much for your quick reply. So far I have not gotten any more replys...I wonder if i start a new thread perhaps i may get some more responses. I am one who strives to be "in the know" and this is puzzling me. But I'll figure this out one way or another!

thanks again..

Yes, michigan is beautiful....but I prefer the summer time...love those vacations on the water!