A judgment is entered upon by a court. This means that a lender has sued your for payment of a debt.
If you get a judgment on your credit history it will cause your score to do down tremendously. This is usually the last step a lender will take to recover payment.
This mark can be reported on your credit for up to 10 years depending upon what state the judgment was filed in. This mark will probably keep you from being approved for any future credit, without paying outrageous interest rates.
A judgment can cause you to pay higher interest rates on your unsecured debt. This is a very derogatory mark to have on your credit.
However you are not stuck with this mark. You can remove it from your credit before ten years ticks away. You must dispute the validity or accuracy of the judgment.
This is done through mailing a dispute letter to each credit bureau challenging the accuracy or validity of the listing. You can also hire a professional credit service to do this for you.
The advantage of a professional is that they are more likely to get a response and an investigation started by the credit bureaus. Frequently individuals are given the run around.
It is commonplace for the credit bureaus to erroneously respond to a dispute letter. This is because it only costs credit bureaus money to conduct investigations thus they are resistant to the process.
Therefore common responses to an initial dispute letter are to ask the consumer for more information regarding the dispute. The credit bureaus do this regardless of their need for the information.
On a positive note, once an investigation is conducted listings are typically deleted regardless of their accuracy. This is because lenders are not willing to spend money to validate uncollectable debts. It costs the lenders too much money.
Once you have a valid dispute honored and the investigation is performed you probably will have the negative mark removed.
