Category: Payday Loans

How do I get a free credit report?

Posted on by Sean Wood in Bankruptcy, Bankruptcy Attorney, Chapter 13, Chapter 7, Credit Report, Payday Loans

How do I get a free credit report?

Short answer: go to www.annualcreditreport.com and request a free credit report.

19 creditOne of the most important things you need to do when preparing for a bankruptcy is to identify all your creditors. You are required to list all of your debts and creditors on the bankruptcy petition. I’ve had a number of clients ask me ‘how do I identify all of my creditors?’

The best place to start is with a credit report. Credit reports are not perfect and they don’t list all of your debts but for most people the credit report will include most of your debts. There, however, are some items that are usually not reported on your credit report. Pay day loan companies, for example, generally do not go to the effort to report these loans to the credit bureaus. Small businesses also rarely report debts. That is why I recommend to my clients that they keep a stack of all the bills and legal documents they have received.

Is it your bankruptcy attorney’s job to identify all your debts? People ask me this all the time and the answer is ‘no’. Not only is not his job, it’s also impossible for your attorney to identify all your debts. Your bankruptcy attorney can pull a credit report for you but, as I mentioned before, not all debts will be listed on your credit report. The person who knows your debts best, is you.

I always pull a credit report for my clients for a couple of reasons. First, I want to be sure I can identify as many debts as possible. Second, people often don’t keep track of lawsuits or judgments filed against them. Third, and most importantly, I can import all the data from the credit report into the software I use to create the bankruptcy petition which saves me huge amounts of time. As a side note, years ago, when I was a mere legal clerk, I used to manually enter in the data from credit reports into the computer. It was horrible. My eyes and my fingers hated me for it.

Although I pull credit reports for my clients, I encourage them to get and print out a copy of their credit report for our initial consultation. It helps both me and my clients figure out what debts they have.

Once a year you can order your free credit report from www.annualcreditreport.com. It’s a good idea, whether you are considering bankruptcy or not, to review your credit report to make sure there are no errors.

Payday loan bill flies through House Committee

Posted on by Sean Wood in Bankruptcy, Payday Loans, Utah Legislative Session

imgresThe Utah Legislative Session is up and running and the bills are passing. One of the bills of interest to me is HB127. This bill is designed to reform many of the practices of Payday loan companies. Today it sailed through the House Business and Labor Committee by a vote of 12-0.

Why is this of interest to bankruptcy attorneys you ask? Just the other day I was talking to an individual who was telling me about her debts and she proceeded to list off seven payday loan companies that she hadn’t repaid. What I see happening are people obtaining payday loans in desperation to pay off debt hoping to be able to pay off the payday loan in a couple of weeks only to realize that they don’t have the money. Seeing that big interest is going to hit (the average interest being 474% for payday loans) they decide to get another payday loan to pay off the previous loan which then cannot be repaid. The cycle repeats itself. Wash, rinse, repeat. Soon they find themselves in a financial avalanche that they will never recover from.

Here are some of the more important provisions of the bill:

-Payday loans, usually for two weeks, currently can be renewed or “rolled over” for up to 10 weeks, after which no more interest may be paid. The bill would then give borrowers 60 days to pay off the loan before lenders could take any action against them.

-The bill would require lenders to file any default lawsuits where borrowers live or obtained the loan. Many lenders now make borrowers waive that right, and lenders do such things as sue people living in St. George in an Orem court — making cases difficult to defend.

-The bill would require lenders to do at least minimal checking to see if borrowers can afford the loans and rollovers, including looking at pay stubs, doing a credit check or looking at repayment history of previous loans.

-The bill would require the industry to report to the state how many loans go the full 10 weeks, how many end up in default, and the amounts involved. Advocates now claim that default rates are high while the industry claims it is low, and the data should show what is true.

What do you think? Is more regulation of payday loans good policy?