A very common misconception is that child support debt is treated the same as other consumer credit debt for credit reporting purposes. In many aspects it is not.
One major difference is when assigning DOFD. It helps to understand if you think of your child support order not as one order entered on, say, January 1, 2000, but a series of individual orders each coming into effect on the date each payment is due and continuing until the initial court order extinguishes the child support obligation. Thus, if you think in terms of general consumer credit debt, with child support debt the DOFD is really the DOLD and it is from that date that your seven-year deletion period begins. If the child support obligation has been reduced to a lien, the lien can remain for seven years following payment in full.
Also, once you have "made up" a missed payment it does not necessarily mean you are no longer in arrears. All payments are first applied towards current support, medical support (if any) and penalty interest (if any) before then being applied to arrearages. Fortunately, though states do not initially report a child support trade line until thirty days after the second consecutive payment is due and remains unpaid or until a certain balance in arrearages is reached. Both Pennsylvania and Maryland use the two consecutive missed payment rule. Once the trade line has been established, it is not removed once one has come current on payments and will remain until seven years have elapsed or either the CRA or your state CSEU decides to delete it -- whichever comes first.
There is no statute of limitations for child support in Pennsylvania and Maryland either just recently has or will very soon eliminate the statute of limitations on child support. Although this cannot be applied retroactively, in interstate cases the SOL that is applied can be either that of the initiating state or that of the responding state so in your case, unfortunately, you have no SOL on your child support obligation. This, however, has no effect on reportng the trade line to CRAs.
Message Edited by FullBird on 09-07-2009 06:45 PM
