Guide to Your Legal Leg Up Articles and Videos on Credit Repair
Here is a list of materials arranged by category and topic. This list will be updated often, so please check back if you do not see any resource that answers one of your questions. Also, please note that many of the resources could be included under different categories, so if you don’t see what you’re looking for under one category, keep looking, or try a “site search” by topic to look for specific issues. There is, of course, a lot of overlap between Credit and Debt law and the categories within them. Videos marked with * are available for public viewing – others are for members of the site only.
Credit Repair
Repairing Your Credit after Litigation
You probably know that I am a big believer in filing a counterclaim. As I mention in the featured question section this month, having a counterclaim gives you some very important control over the lawsuit itself and whether you get sued or harassed again by the same, or a different debt collector.
There is also another reason relating to your life after litigation: Repairing your credit after the lawsuit.
Credit Reporting Act (also called the “Fair Credit Reporting Act)
* Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act *
You’ve heard about having rights to a fair credit report. Here, in plain English, is a list and explanation of your most important rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Download a copy of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Two Kinds of Verification and How to Use them to Protect Your Rights
We have spent much of our time talking about “verification” on our site and videos, and what we have meant in most of that has been the “verification” process provided by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). But there is another kind of validation you can use – validation as permitted by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. You can use both to protect your rights.
Bankruptcy
* If you have debt troubles, can bankruptcy help? It seems like it should be able to, but in fact there are big limitations. This video discusses some of the pros and cons of bankruptcy.
Is Bankruptcy an Option for You?
When people are being sued for debts, they often panic and look for the quickest, easiest, or least scary way out. And bankruptcy often occurs to them as the solution. I believe there are often much more effective ways to handle old debt, especially credit card or merchant account debt that has been sold to a debt collector, than bankruptcy. Panic is not necessary, and bankruptcy—at least at first–is seldom the best solution in a real-world sense. Here’s why.
Repairing Credit
Some people suggest that you try to “buy” credit repair by offering what amounts to a bribe to the businesses that are reporting negative information. We think that’s a bad idea, since you are both essentially offering to pay them to lie about you and probably admitting that the information they are reporting is true. Better instead to dsipute the information through the CRA dispute process.
* Credit Repair – Why it’s Right, and Why You Need it *
If you have had, or do have, debt problems, then you almost certainly also have credit report problems. In this article and video we discuss why repairing your credit is morally and ethically right, and why you need to do it.
After you get things under control, it isn’t really enough just to neutralize negative credit references and information as much as possible. It will help if you can generate some positive credit history – to build your credit you need good things and not just not bad things. This article has some ideas for you to use to generate that positive credit.
Repairing Your Credit after Litigation
You probably know that I am a big believer in filing a counterclaim. As I mention in the featured question section this month, having a counterclaim gives you some very important control over the lawsuit itself and whether you get sued or harassed again by the same, or a different debt collector.
When you start repairing your credit, you will want to know what the items on your report mean: are they good? bad? indifferent? and what are they saying happened? This article will help answer those questions.
Rebuilding Life
Rebuilding Your Life after Disaster
If you have recently undergone some sort of disaster – job, divorce, catastrophe – you can start again. It may help to take baby steps and to keep your mind on the possibility of improvement.
Using Secured Credit to Rebuild Credit Report
In repairing your credit, you need to do more than just remove “bad” information, as important as that is, you must also begin to build positive credit history. You can do this using a secured credit card.
