Chexsystems is a company that reports bounced checks and overdrafts to banks. Think of it like a credit report for how people use their checking accounts. Usually a bank will run your name through Chexsystems when you try to open a new checking account to see if you are a good candidate. If you have faced financial hardships in the past, there is a decent chance you will be denied when you try to open a new checking account.

After you file bankruptcy, the discharge should erase overdrafts and bounced checks from your record. On the Chexsystems report, any money that you owed the bank should have a trade line this reads either “included in bankruptcy” or “discharged in bankruptcy” and the debt should be reduced to zero. This makes your Chexsystems report clean and the bank has little standing from preventing you from opening a new account.

However, if a balance still remains after bankruptcy, it needs to be disputed. This begins by getting a free copy of your Chexsystems report, which you are entitled to. However, you need to wait for the bankruptcy discharge to go through to get a report that should be cleansed.

This waiting time ranges from three months after filing a Chapter 7 bankruptcy to three to five years if you filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. However, once you have waited and still find debts on your report, the disputing process can begin.

Once the dispute is filed through Chexsystems, they have 30 days to investigate and correct the entry. During this time, they contact the bank responsible for the entry and make sure it is deleted. If they do nothing or fail to delete it within the 30-day time limit, you are entitled to the right to sue them for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

If you have filed bankruptcy and found that Chexsystems is less than cooperative in your request to erase a debt that should have been wiped out with bankruptcy or are starting to file bankruptcy, contact us today. Bankruptcy is a long and messy process, but the Buettner Law Group can help.