What Are Credit Card Debt Statute Of Limitations For My State

There are a couple of things to understand about the credit card debt statute of limitations. The first thing that you need to know is that the statute of limitations for credit card debt vary from state to state so you’ll have to check with a lawyer in your area to know exactly how long it lasts. However, another thing to keep in mind is that the statute of limitations only applies to suing over credit card debt, and not about collecting the debt itself. Companies can attempt to the collect the debt for as long as they choose, but they cannot sue over it, if it is a time barred debt, or one that has exceeded the statute of limitations.

A company cannot sue or threaten to sue on credit card debt collection statute of limitations that have passed. Sometimes these companies try to do it anyway, and your best bet is to procure a lawyer and get him or her to handle the court case because they can immediately get it thrown out of court if the credit card debt statute of limitation is up. However, as mentioned the statute of limitations on credit card debt does vary so you’ll need to check. What may be the case in one state could be something completely different in the next state over.

The courts may not have a particular statute of limitations set for credit card debt specifically, but may instead refer to accounts that are open or written contracts and can cover everything from credit card debt to mortgages and other types of contractual items. The statute of limitations on these type of accounts is somewhere between three and ten years. If you get a notice about a court hearing on old debt then the first thing that you’ll want to do is contact a lawyer and find out if the debt is still within the statute of limitations for your particular state.

One thing that you should know about credit card debt and about debt collection in general is that any time you contact the creditor or make a payment on a debt, you risk re-opening the account and starting both the statute of limitations over again and the seven years from the time of last activity on a debt before it drops off of your credit report. You should always attempt to work with the newest debts first because these are the ones that hurt your credit the most and older debts may be falling off soon if you don’t do anything with them.

The statute of limitations is only three years on just eight states. These are Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia and North and South Carolina. The rest of the states range from four years such as Texas, California, New Mexico and Nevada and Utah to six years. The only states where the statute of limitations are seven or more years are Montana, Wyoming and Illinois. These number were accurate as of 2008 so you’ll still want to check the laws in your area to make sure this is still accurate, as laws change all the time.