County Court Judgments, or CCJs, will hurt your credit score and make it harder for you to get loans. What are CCJs, and what can you do if you get one?
Getting a County Court Judgement, or CCJ, against you will have a big effect on your credit score. This is because it shows that you have had such a hard time paying back a loan or other form of credit that your creditor had to go to court to try to get the money back.
If you fall behind on your payments and can't come to a deal with your creditor, the creditor may decide that a CCJ is the only way to get you to pay. The first time you'll know about it is when the county court sends you a "Claim Form" in the mail. This form will list the details of the claim, like who the creditor is and how much they say you owe them.
If you didn't know you owed money, maybe because you moved and lost touch with the creditor, you can stop the legal process by paying off the whole debt now. If you can't pay off the debt, you should fill out a "Admissions Form," which you should have also received.
This form asks for information about your income and expenses, which the court will take into account when it hears your case. The Admissions Form should be sent back within 16 days of the postmark on it. However, if you plan to dispute or defend the claim, you can ask for an extra 14 days to prepare your defence.
After you fill out these forms and send them back to the court, a simple hearing will take place in private. You don't have to go to the hearing as long as you've filled out all the forms or if you don't want to agree with parts of the claim.
At the hearing, the court will look at the claim and the information you've given in an unbiased way and decide how much (if any) money you owe and how to pay it back. It's important to remember that no one is being found "guilty" or "not guilty" in this case. Instead, the court is just trying to find a fair solution to a civil financial dispute.
If the claim against you is upheld by the decision, then the court order or CCJ is sent. You still have a month from the date of the court hearing to pay off the debt in full and stop the CCJ from going on your credit report.
After a month, the CCJ will be added to the Register of County Court Judgments. From there, it will be added to your credit file by the different credit reference agencies.
If you have one or more CCJs on your credit file, you won't be able to get most kinds of credit, because most lenders won't want to give credit to people in your situation. Once you've paid off the debt, though, the CCJ will be marked as "satisfied." This won't get rid of it from your record, but it will hurt your credit rating a lot less than an unpaid CCJ.
If you have a CCJ on your record, you might be tempted by companies that say they can get rid of it and improve your score. Sadly, this is only possible in a small number of situations. Sometimes, the CCJ is put on your record by accident, even if you paid off the debt within the one-month deadline. If this has happened to you, you can have it taken off your records.
The only other way to get rid of a CCJ is to show that something went wrong with how the judgement was made. For example, if you didn't get the initial Claim Form and didn't know what was going on, you didn't have a chance to defend yourself, so the judgement isn't valid.
In this case, you can ask the court to "set aside" the judgement, which means that it will be taken off your record and the whole process will start over with a new claim and hearing. If you try to get a "set aside" without a good reason, it could be seen as wasting the court's time, which could lead to legal consequences.
If you get a Claim Form in the mail, you shouldn't freak out. Even though having a CCJ on your record is bad for your credit score, it is not a crime and won't lead to further actions like losing your home or filing for bankruptcy. The CCJ procedure is there so that the court can help you settle your debt in a way that is fair to both you and your creditor.
