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When you see a civil judgment on your credit report it means that a creditor has sued you for payment of a debt. It is a legal hearing that gives the debt collector an extended amount of time to collect the debt.
This happens with larger unsecured debts. It will give the debt collector up to 20 years to collect payment. This is beyond the 7 year statue of limitations that applies to all other debts.
It has become common for debt collectors to renew their judgments against the debtor. This will give the debt collector another 20 years to try and recover payment on the debt.
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 you pay a judgment the listing will change to a satisfied judgment. This is still a negative mark and will hurt your credit score.
To remove a judgment from your credit report you should dispute the judgment. This means you are disputing the validity or accuracy 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 a judgment is not verified as accurate it must be deleted by the credit bureaus. Often when listings are disputed they are removed regardless of their accuracy.
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.
Thus some individuals have found it beneficial to hire a professional credit repair firm to dispute the listings on their behalf.