Find Out Your State's Statute of Limitations On Debt...Make "The System" Work For You (for once!)

[Anonymous]

Starting my credit (re)building journey...wanted to share this victory as encouragement...

First off, a little context:   Back in 2013, my wife and I were so fed up with our landlord and their property management company that we broke our lease and left...not caring about any financial repercussions because we were young and immature.  I remember telling my wife: "I'm not voluntarily giving them another dime of my money...ever!" (There were far more explicitives in there...you can imagine).  The end result was a $1600 collection placed out on my wife and I's credit reports in December 2013.

Fast forward to now...I'm much wiser and in my 30s now...thinking about my family's future and wanting to find some security to our future.  While stalking this forum, I see some mentions of Statute of Limitations on debt collection.  I had always thought that all debt collections (minus student debt) was removed after seven years...but apparently, it some states that isn't the case.  Here in Arkansas, The Natural State...there is a nice little provision in the Arkansas Code of AR 16-56-111 which states that no debt collection in the State can be enforced past a period of five(5) years albeit as long as no partial payments on the debt have been paid.  I combed through my credit report to see the age of my debt collections...there lie the $1600 collection from SW Credit Systems for breaking my lease...aged 5 year and 1 month.  So this stoked the lightbulb in my head...surely, it can't be THAT easy...but what's the worst that could happen?  They say no and nothing changes?

With that in mind...I decided to go full YOLO and submitted a dispute to all three credit agencies citing this particular statute of the Arkansas Code (since the debt was generated in AR).  Within 10 days, I heard back from Experian...Collection deleted.  Three days later, Equifax...Collection deleted.  Two days after that, Transunion...Collection DE-LE-TED!!!  And just like that, karmic justice ran forth and my youthful contempt actually benefitted me for a change.  Overnight, I saw 50 point jumps on all my FICO scores!

Moral of the story:  Find out the laws in your state!  Read, Google, research, whatever...because there could be a little law you probably knew nothing about that could work to your advantage.  

[RobertEG]

The cited section of Ark statute applies to the statute of limitations for civil action seeking a judgment on debt based on a written instrument.

It has nothing to do with requiring credit report exclusion at 5 years.

The credit report excclusion provisions are totally separate from the SOL periods for bringing civil action seeking a judgment on debt.

You were fortunate that the debt collector chose to delete.  It was not a requirement that they do so based on the cited code.

The only state that has a shorter period of credit report exclusion than the federal periods set forth in 

FCRA 605(a) is New York State, which has implemented a specific provision for judgments, collections, and charge-offs that permits exclusion at five years, as opposed to the federal period of 7 years.

More specifically, it is set forth at section 380-j of the New York State General Business Law, and is not an SOL on civil action.\

It is explicitly a credit report exclusion provision, unlike the cited section of Ark statute.

That is totally unrelated to and separate from statute of limitations on bringing civil aciton.