Question: Can negative listing due to child support payments be deleted from credit reports
Answer: Child support arrears remain on your credit report for up to seven years, unless you make a deal with the child support enforcement agency. An agency may agree not to report negative information to the credit reporting agencies if you pay some or all of the overdue support.
Your State laws may be different but in some States when child support arrears is unpaid for 180 days or more it will appear on credit reports as a separate collection account. Once a collection account is paid in full, that account will be deleted from the credit reports.
If you owe current support but pay off any past due balance your account will continue to be reported to the credit bureaus, but with a zero balance. If your account was past due before you paid your balance, it will be reported as current from the time of the payment.
Now don’t get me wrong, you can dispute anything on your credit reports that is incorrect or inaccurate. You have 3 choices on where you can dispute:
(1) File a consumer dispute directly with the credit bureaus and they will have 30 days to investigate. If the agency reporting the child support on your credit files does not respond, then the account must be deleted.
(2) You can dispute directly with the agency that is handling your child support case. They also have 30 days to respond to a dispute or the account must be deleted. Provide them with any documentation indicating that the child-support debt is inaccurate. If they indicate that the information is indeed inaccurate, get a written statement from them.
(3) Dispute directly with the state child support enforcement unit. You never know, state agencies have a lot of paper work and if you dispute with the credit bureaus they may not respond within the 30-day time frame. If that is the case, the account will be deleted.
But accurate information can be re-inserted when and if they do respond to the dispute.
You may have a better chance if you can work out something with the child support agency and request they delete the negative listing. And, there is also the option of getting a waiver for past due amounts.
You would need to seek proper legal advice but in some circumstances, a custodial parent may agree to waive past due child support. Reasons may be that the custodial parent is financially capable of caring for the child without the past due support or because the noncustodial parent made an offer to pay a portion of the past due support in exchange for the custodial parent waiving the remaining balance. Any waiver would need the court's approval.
If a waiver is obtained it can be used to dispute the negative information on credit reports because once a waiver is approved by the court, a new child support order will erase the past due support. That new documentation can be used to dispute negative past due information.
