hi, I'm new here and have lots of questions!!

just because they remove it from your credit report does not make the debt go away ... they can sell it, or get their ducks in a row and have it put back on your reports. The Statute of Limitations on debts might be an issue with the 1996 debt. What state do you live in, and is that the state where the debts were incurred in?

1. I went through a period where I was unemployed and it shot my credit to hell. Collections, write-offs, anything you can think of. Like down to a 300 to 400 credit score. When I got a steady job, I improved it up to about 690 over the course of three or four years myself by doing the following: I got copies of my credit reports from all 3 credit bureaus. I made a master list of all negative original accounts (i.e. credit cards) and all secondary accounts (i.e. debt collectors). First, I disputed every single negative credit entry on my credit reports with all three bureaus. This actually ended up getting about 30-40% of them removed (if they don't respond within a certain time period, the credit bureau will remove it automatically) and saved me from having to pay it. For original creditors (i.e. credit card companies), I just decided to wait for it to drop off my credit report (that's why it took so long to rehabilitate my credit). For all the collection agencies, I wrote them a letter offering 30% of what they wanted, in installments over 6 months, but only if they deleted completely their negative remark on my credit report. That worked to varying degrees, but eventually I paid them all off. After the 6 to 8 months it took for most of the heavy credit repair work to get done, I managed to massage my credit from 400 to about 600. Now, 2 years laters its almost to 700 since most the remaining negative items have fallen off do to being over 7 years old.

2. All contracts (i.e. your agreement with a credit card company) fall within a Statute of Limitations. Once the SOL has passed, neither party can enforce the contract against the other in court. In CA, I believe the SOL is 4 years, so no, they can not get a sustained judgement against you for that debt. Most likely this woman is just trying to intimidate you. When she says "have to file in the LA County" she is saying that she is going to fill a lawsuit against you in the LA County courthouse which is a load of BS.

3. You can request that they remove it from your credit report when you negotiate to settle the debt. Some will, some won't.

4. You can't just request for a negative item to be removed from your credit report. You had to either 1) successfully dispute that item; or 2) the entity reporting it to the credit bureau has to remove it. So if you pay a negative item off, it may still show up on your credit report as a bad debt thats been paid, rather then an open bad debt.

When I was in a position to pay debt to clear up my credit record: 1) first I cleared off anything I didn't have to pay by disputing everything negative; 2) paid off the newest debt (by date of actually being incurred with the original creditor) first. I.e., If I had a credit card debt from Company A in 2005, and a credit card debt from Company B from 2003, but a collector had placed a negative entry in 2006, I paid Company A because all entries from Company B, including the entry from the Collector, would fall off my credit report first.

Hopefully this answers most if not all of your questions!

Great post, Andrew. It does take a lot of legwork and patience to get these things cleared up, but it does give you peace of mind when it's all done. I'm in the process of cleaning up my credit reports. I'm sending validation letters and eventually Pay For Delete letters. I just wish I would have paid more attention to these things before. We are trying to rent an apartment right now, & these negative items are/will affect the outcome of this. Thanks again for the positive post...at least we know there is light at the end of the tunnel.