Standard Discharge, now what?

[marknashe]

Okay, so my case was saying "awaiting closing" for the longest time. My lawyer was useless, so I called the trustee. They told me they had no idea why, to call the court. I called the court and the case administrator said, oh yeahhhh, I'll get this done right away. As of today, I have a discharge (standard discharge, whatever that means). However, I see the case is not closed?

After this journey, I'm glad its over, well almost over. I have a few questions, which I hope someone can answer. My questions are,

1) can I contact the credit bureaus now, to have them update my credit reports?
2) I have a car lease during this 13 plan, and the lease is up like in 2 weeks haha, am I allowed to apply for credit? No car company(except Ford) would give me a lease while in the 13. Now that I have this discharge paper, will I be okay?
3) When does the case actually get closed? What is the difference between discharged and closed?

Thanks, I'm very green on this and I hope I never have to do this again. I'm grateful for the help, but it was a wild ride

Mark

[bpokey]

Mark - I have *no* answers to any of your questions (now go click the hyperlink that says you found this post helpful! <grin>). ***BUT*** I wanted to express congrat's on making it to discharge. We can all attest how hard this process is. CONGRAT'S!

[disconapper]

1. The credit bureaus should automatically update. I would pull a credit report 30 days after discharge to ensure they are doing as they are supposed to. If they have not properly updated your accounts, then I'd get on them.

2. You should be okay to apply for credit once you are discharge, you can always verify with your attorney. Although I'd discourage getting out of debt and getting right back into debt but with a leased vehicle you really have no other choice.

3. From what I know, 13's taker longer to close than a 7. I believe the "closure" is a paperwork issue, making sure all of your payments have been processed etc. I'm sure the 13 experts will chime in here.

Congrats on the discharge! That's a gigantic accomplishment. I'm a 7'er and I know the 13'ers have a tough road, congrats again!

[IamOld]

Congratulations indeed!!!!

[LadyInTheRed]

Congratulations! Your financial life is entirely your own again and you are free to apply for whatever you want. Be careful out there!

[marknashe]

thank you all for the kind words.

What's sad is, I paid every lease payment of my car during this 13 process, and now that it's discharged, they still refuse to update the credit reports to say I've made such payments. It would help me start to repair my credit. I rather not apply for credit, I was hoping to extend the lease for 6mo, but they wont extend my lease.

I never wanted to file, but unfortunately, the credit companies kept raising my interest even though I was paying on time, and more than minimum. It got to the point where I could no longer afford the monthly minimums. My advice to anyone going through it is, stick with it. I take it as one of life's many lessons. Lesson learned.

[lrprn]

What's sad is, I paid every lease payment of my car during this 13 process, and now that it's discharged, they still refuse to update the credit reports to say I've made such payments. It would help me start to repair my credit.

Creditors hold all the cards in the credit score game. Reporting our on-time payments to the credit bureaus is completely voluntary whether Ch 13 was filed or not.

The best 'fix' for your credit score is time. Since this creditor refuses to post your payments, you'll have to count on your other on-time payments that are being reported to help your score over time and/or take out a cc or loan that will help your credit score by reporting your on-time payments.

It's good that you don't want to apply for credit. For many of us (not all though), as Flamingo says, "A credit card is a snake in your pocket." It can be easy to fall back into old bad habits with credit if we don't stay constantly vigilant and stay faithful to one of our hard-earned Ch 13 financial lessons - don't spend more than you make.

[kornellred]

Don't worry - you will have boundless opportunities to get right back into debt again, even with a crummy credit score.