What your credit report should look like after a bankruptcy

A discharge is supposed to be a clean line. Credit reports frequently do not reflect it, and the reason is that two different things are being reported and people conflate them.

Two separate items

The bankruptcy case itself is a public record entry. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a)(1), cases under title 11 or the Bankruptcy Act are excluded from consumer reports when they, “from the date of entry of the order for relief or the date of adjudication, as the case may be, antedate the report by more than 10 years.”

Ten years, from the order for relief or adjudication. That is the case, and a discharge does not shorten it.

The individual debts included in the bankruptcy are separate tradelines, each reported by its own furnisher. How each is reported after discharge is a separate accuracy question about that tradeline.

Most post-bankruptcy disputes are about the second category, not the first.

The characteristic errors

A discharged debt still showing a balance owed. The most common. The account was included and discharged; the tradeline still reports an amount currently due.

A discharged debt still reporting as delinquent or charged off after the discharge date. Continuing to accrue late status on a debt that was discharged.

A debt sold after the bankruptcy and reported by a buyer with no indication of the discharge — sometimes with a new date, which also raises the date of first delinquency problem.

A debt included in the filing but not reported as such.

A debt that was not in the bankruptcy reported as though it were — the error in the other direction, which matters if you are still dealing with that creditor.

The provisions that apply

These are ordinary accuracy questions, and the ordinary standards govern.

Section 1681e(b) requires reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of information concerning the individual the report relates to.

Section 1681i(a)(5)(A) requires prompt deletion or modification of information found inaccurate, incomplete, or that cannot be verified.

Section 1681s-2(a)(2) requires a furnisher that determines information it provided is incomplete or inaccurate to promptly notify the agency, provide corrections, and stop furnishing the incomplete or inaccurate version.

And the private route against a furnisher runs through a bureau dispute — § 1681s-2(b) duties attach on notice from an agency under § 1681i(a)(2). See disputing with the bureau, the furnisher, or both.

What makes this dispute unusually strong

You have a court order.

A discharge order is a document from a federal court, obtainable in certified form, listing what happened. Most credit disputes are one person’s account against a company’s records. This one comes with an official document.

So the dispute writes itself in the most checkable possible form: this tradeline reports a balance of X as currently owing; this debt was discharged on [date] in case number [number] in the [district]; a copy of the discharge order is enclosed; the schedules listing this creditor are enclosed.

Practical steps

1. Get certified copies of the discharge order and the schedules listing creditors. Order them once and keep them — they are the foundation of every dispute you will file about this.
2. Pull all three reports and go through them account by account against the schedules.
3. List every discrepancy specifically — which account, what it reports, what it should report.
4. Dispute with the bureaus, enclosing the discharge order.
5. Consider disputing directly with each furnisher as well — see the direct route and its address requirements in disputing with the bureau, the furnisher, or both.
6. Re-pull in 60 days and again later. Discharged debts that are sold or transferred can reappear. See when a deleted item comes back.

What a discharge does not do

It does not remove the bankruptcy from your report. Ten years is ten years.

It does not remove the history of the accounts before the filing. Late payments that actually happened before the bankruptcy are accurate history.

It does not automatically correct anything. Nothing in the system watches your discharge and updates tradelines. The correction happens because you notice and dispute.

Whether a particular debt was discharged, what a particular order covers, and what any creditor may lawfully do afterwards are legal questions about your case. We are describing what credit reports commonly get wrong after a discharge and which document settles it.