Legal Question in Bankruptcy in Florida

Re: Judgments

Hello: I just read your question. This comes up often. You need to find out from your bankruptcy papers or from the clerk of the BR court if you or your atty. filed a motion to avoid the judgment IN THE BANKRUPTCY CASE. If you did, the credit reporting companies need to reflect that--the debt should be listed as discharged---gone. You'll need to hound them until they correct that.

If you did not file that motion, you have two options. One, you could file a motion to re-open the BR case to file that motion. They charge a fee to re-open the case.

The other option is to file a motion in State court for the same jurisdiction where the judgment was entered. It has to be at least one year since the BR court entered a discharge (you state it's been 5 years). There is a Fla. Statute that allows the judgment to be set aside by a court order so long as you attach a copy of the particular schedule that shows the creditor was listed and a copy of the discharge. I just did one of those for a client and the court signed the order. I cannot remember the Statute # right off hand, but it's easy to find.

Either way, so long as you listed the creditor on your schedules and there was a discharge entered, the creditor cannot ever collect on that debt. Sometimes the creditor sells debts to another company that buys them and tries to collect on them. Often the new company is not aware the debt was discharged in BR.

'Hope this helped. If my office can be of assistance on this or some other matters in the future, please contact me. Tom Rosenblum