If you have a default judgment it means that a lender has sued you in order to recover payment of an outstanding debt. It is a legal proceeding that gives a lender a large amount of time to collect on the debt.

Most debts have a 7 year statue of limitations. With a judgment it allows the debt collector up to 20 years to collect on the debt. Judgments typically occur with unsecured debt.

A new tactic that debt collectors have been using is renewing judgments. This gives the debt collectors an additional 20 years to try and collect payment after the first 20 years. This makes it possible for a judgment to follow you for the rest of your life.

A judgment will drastically reduce your credit score. Be aware that paying a judgment will not remove it from your credit report.

If you pay a judgment it only changes the mark to a satisfied judgment. It is still a negative mark and will not help improve your credit score.

The most effective way or removing judgments is done by disputing the judgment. This means you are challenging the accuracy or validity of the judgment.

The judgment must be disputed directly with the credit bureaus. This is done by sending a dispute letter to the credit bureaus.

If the judgment is not verified then it must be removed by the credit bureaus. It has been found that when negative listings are disputed they are often removed.

This happens because it costs the debt collectors money to verify a listing. Typically debt collectors do not want to spend money verifying listings.

It will be difficult to get the credit bureaus to actually conduct an investigation into your dispute. This is because it costs the credit bureaus money to conduct investigations.

This is the reason why credit repair services are often hired to dispute listings on behalf on an individual.