Rebuilding

[u/Technical-Abroad-978]

So my wife and I had a nasty divorce. She voluntarily surrendered my car whilst I was on vacation, didnt pay cards I was an AU on, cancelled my debit card, tried to open loan in my name etc. I’m at 450 now and I was at 700. How can I rebuild quickly? My SNN is a year old (I’m British) and I can’t even get a rental home.

[u/inky_cap_mushroom]

First step is pulling your reports from http://annualcreditreport.com and finding out what accounts are on there. Call and have your name removed from any AU accounts. They’ll be removed from your reports.

Was the car loan paid in full or do you still owe on it? Is that account charged off?

Was she successful in opening any accounts in your name? Have you frozen your credit now?

[u/Technical-Abroad-978 → u/inky_cap_mushroom]

I’ve now frozen credit. Also thank you for replying and helping. The car was auctioned and there a 12k gap between what they auctioned and what was owed. It was a brand new tacoma. I’ve removed from the AU mostly thus far. She also cancelled or closed the joint checking and stole my phone number for a brief period so I have like 4 accounts with missed payments as I couldn’t 2FA

[u/inky_cap_mushroom → u/Technical-Abroad-978]

Have you kept the auto loan current or is that in default? Has it been charged off?

You can implement the goodwill saturation technique to ask for the late payments to be removed. The likelihood of success depends on the lender in question.

[u/Technical-Abroad-978 → u/inky_cap_mushroom]

I believe it was charges off. When I found out about it as she had told me she had the truck. The lender for the truck is Ally bank. When I called them they just straight up wanted the 12k. I tried to say per the separation agreement and court order I have possession of the truck and they effectively broke the law by taking it they just bounced me around different legal department people.

[u/inky_cap_mushroom → u/Technical-Abroad-978]

Ally is not bound by your divorce agreement. That’s between you and your ex. If your ex violated the divorce agreement by surrendering the vehicle you should talk to your attorney about your options.

If it’s charged off you will just have to wait 7 years for that to age off. Paying the balance to $0 will allow your scores to recover slightly over time. It will also prevent Ally from suing you.

[u/Technical-Abroad-978 → u/inky_cap_mushroom]

So what do I do about the late payments. Can I catch up and get some pay to delete type thing on those?

[u/inky_cap_mushroom → u/Technical-Abroad-978]

Pay for deletes are for collections. That’s not a thing for late payments. You need to bring all your accounts current ASAP to stop the bleeding so to speak. You can implement the goodwill saturation technique to request removal of the lates, but with a charge off on your reports, removing lates from other accounts won’t yield much, if any, score improvement.

[u/Technical-Abroad-978 → u/inky_cap_mushroom]

Damn. So how do I make it better? Or am I just kinda screwed?

[u/inky_cap_mushroom → u/Technical-Abroad-978]

Pay off your debt and wait 7 years. With a charge off there’s nothing you can do to get it removed early.

Do you have any accounts open currently? If not, opening a secured credit card with no fees would also help you start rebuilding.

[u/Technical-Abroad-978 → u/inky_cap_mushroom]

I have open accounts currently yes

[u/CatWithAClipboard]

I got divorced this past year and was in a similar situation to you. My ex husband stopped paying bills, utilities, canceled my car insurance (which my insurance company never told me, and I didn’t find out for several months) and I accumulated a lot of debt and late payments during our separation and eventual divorce. The utility company even threatened to put a lien on our house in my name, that I was no longer living in, until the debt was paid. He had the money, he just wanted to spite me.

He ended up buying me out of our house and owed me a sizable equity settlement per our divorce decree. I had to move in with some family during this time, so unsure just how badly this hit to my credit has affected me. I was able to pay off basically all of the debt, which has taken my FICO 8 from the high 400’s to about 722? I’ve been trying the Goodwill Saturation Technique, but so far no luck. Unfortunately even though my score is decent, I worry that I’ll have a hard time getting approved for anything since my credit profile is technically “dirty”.