With credit repair many of the credit listings we remove from our clients credit files are court actions such as Court Writs or Court Judgments. Each state in Australia has a slightly different legal process to accomplish this, in the state of New South Wales the main documents used are either a Notice of Discontinuance or a Consent Order.
The first step is understanding the difference between these documents and when these are used. If an application to set a court action aside is filed and the wrong document is used it will be rejected by the court and returned to the party that filed the document, this means the process needs to start again from the beginning, this can be very frustrating for all concerned.
Let me recap how a Court Action is recorded on a credit file. When legal action is commenced this information becomes public record and the credit reporting such as Veda Advantage and Dun & Bradstreet seek out these records and record the data in the credit reports they produce, the point here is it’s not the court or the plaintiff that informs the credit reporting agencies of the event.
When a plaintiff begins the process of commencing a legal claim this action is typically known as a Writ, only when the matter proceeds to a court order being made does the matter progress to a Court Judgment.
Given this, there is pre Judgment activity and post Judgment activity. An example of this would be someone that is served with a Statement of Claim but settles with the Plaintiff before a Court Judgment is awarded. Unfortunately even in this common example a Court Writ listing would be recorded on this persons credit file for five years which can be financially debilitating.
What is particularly tough about this fact is a negative credit listing is only an allegation and does not in itself prove any wrong doing by the defendant. After all, weak or baseless court actions are commenced regularly, these are often overturned however even in these cases the event will be recorded on a credit file for five years and this will almost certainly course problems for someone trying to secure finance.
If a matter has not progressed to a Court Judgment a Notice of Discontinuance is used to set the matter aside, An easy way to remember this is think that the current legal action is to be discontinued. Should the matter have progressed to a Court Judgment a Consent Order is used, think of this as the Plaintiff consenting to the Judgment being set aside.
Given the plaintiff is willing to sign the appropriate document and it is prepared and filed correctly with the court there should be little trouble having the matter set-aside and in turn having the credit listing removed from the credit file.
At Clean Credit we help people every day to have negative credit listings such as Payment Defaults, Clearouts, Serious Credit Infringements and Court Writs and Judgments permanently removed from their credit file.
John Dickinson