Eviction Cases Not Disappearing After Bankruptcy
Sometimes eviction cases do not disappear after filing for bankruptcy. Although bankruptcy is supposed to clear your credit, eviction cases can sometimes still be seen by landlords when you go to rent a new place. It usually depends on how the company researches your past.
Some Landlords Do Not Count Evictions After Bankruptcy
Depending on the background check program, some landlords will not even see your eviction after bankruptcy. Sometimes landlords simply pull a credit report or do a background check. Not all pre-bankruptcy evictions show up on credit reports. They also do not show up on criminal background checks.
Other times, landlords simply ignore pre-bankruptcy evictions. This is especially true if you currently have a $0 balance on the court sight. The landlord assumes that the old evictions are now irrelevant. In addition, the landlord may be comforted in the fact that you might not be able to file for Chapter 7 (or another Chapter) for up to 8 years after you filed your car.
Some Landlords See and Count Evictions After Bankruptcy
Some Landlords now and other creditors are now using extensive reports and background checks. Many pieces of credit information can persist after bankruptcy, such as court records. Even if the court records are clarified as pre-bankruptcy (the bankruptcy clearly notated), the negative effect can still continue. It can still be a concern or possibly even used against you. See these articles on the same matter:
https://www.huskerlaw.com/blog/2021/02/will-bankruptcy-clear-prior-home-evictions/
Your bankruptcy case itself cannot take care of post-filing credit reporting situations. This is for a few reasons. First, your bankruptcy contract is usually for the bankruptcy case filing only. Because of this, you can rest assured that your case gives full notification to all creditors. However, the bankruptcy representation has nothing to do with credit repair or credit building outside of those intrinsic simply the filing itself.
Secondly, your bankruptcy attorney cannot commence credit disputes directly for your credit report. You will need to make these credit repairs yourself (absent the situation where a creditor was never listed or notified of the bankruptcy). These dispute forms are available here:
https://assets.equifax.com/assets/personal/Dispute.pdf
https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/wp-content/themes/exp/pdf/dispute-form.pdf
https://www.transunion.com/docs/rev/personal/InvestigationRequest.pdf
Here also is the generic form sample for all three to save time:
Thirdly, credit info can legally persist after bankruptcy case filings to some degree. Court records can still be searched after a bankruptcy filing. It is not clear if these can be sealed or are even required in any way to be sealed after a bankruptcy is filed. Sometimes, however, you may be able to sue creditors if you are certain they are improperly collecting a debt or misusing credit information. If there are clear creditor violations, sometimes you can hire a FDCPA attorney or bankruptcy violation attorney. However, these violations must be clear and usually egregious. Remember, this is most likely a brand-new court case. You will likely need to find a different attorney as this is a different area of law than general bankruptcy practice. Your original bankruptcy attorney will likely not be equipped to take a violations case.
If you live in Indiana and want more information about bankruptcy, contact our office.
