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A judgment on your credit report means you have been sued for payment of a debt. It is a legal proceeding that will give the creditor extra time to try and 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.

It is also becoming common for debt collectors to renew judgments. This means after 20 years if they have still been unable to collect the debt, they can renew the judgment and have the authority to collect on the debt for another 20 years.

Judgments will hurt your credit score. You should also know that if you pay a judgment it will not be deleted from your credit report.

When a judgment is paid it changes the listing to satisfied judgment. A satisfied judgment is still a derogatory listing and will still hurt your credit score.

In order to delete a judgment you should dispute it. This means you are saying the judgment is inaccurate or invalid.

You dispute the judgment directly with the credit bureaus. This is done by writing 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.

However you will have trouble getting the credit bureaus to investigate the listing. This is because it costs the credit bureaus potential profits to investigate listings.

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