Question: I’ll keep this brief: I had to go to court back in August and had my wages garnished and I ended up with a judgment put on my credit report. I also had a previous judgment on my credit report b/c of credit card debt, and want to know how I can get them taken off my credit report?

Like tax liens, judgments from collection accounts or charged-off credit cards can have a nasty habit of sticking around on your credit report long after they’ve worn out their welcome, so to speak. And these are typically the reason come to us for credit repair. Usually, the best you can hope for is to have the judgment listed as “released,” which will indicate that it’s been satisfied, but it’s still on your report, and that never looks good to any lenders or creditors that might pull your credit report when you’re looking to open new lines of credit.

To get a judgment removed completely from your credit report, you’ll need to have it vacated by the court. This means going to court and filing what’s called a Motion to Vacate, indicating under what legal grounds the judgment should be vacated from your credit report. Most consumers like to cite the lack of proper service if they’d never gone to court as justification for having the judgment dropped.

Your chances of having a judgment vacated from your credit report before the standard 7-year mark are greater if you include the judgment in a bankruptcy, but it’s not a guarantee, and no one is really going to file a BK just to get their judgment removed.

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