My wife had never given thought to her credit score, but when the Target POS hack happened a few years ago she was given free credit check and monitoring and I saw her report which was full of collections and sold off/transferred debts. We weren't in a position to fix or investigate at the time, but about a year later we used free credit report and tried pulling all 3 using the information from the Target report provided to verify past debts and amounts to prove identity, which failed.
What we eventually discovered is that due to large gaps in credit reporting the big 3 bureaus have different past residences, and amazingly only one has her correct birthday, the other two having a wrong date and wrong year, respectively.
Complicating matters, she co-signed for a car with her mom before we even started dating that was eventually repossessed with a large balance. They haven't come after my wife yet, but I suspect they can't find her for all the same reasons she is denied credit and fails background checks, she isn't currently who and where they think.
I need help figuring out where to start. Obviously contacting the reporting agencies to correct the birthdate and update to our current address would help, but is there a smooth way to do this in a single action? My wife also has fairly acute anxiety which means I am doing most of the work, but that throws up several fraud warnings when I've tried to assist in the past.
After we correct the identity issues we plan to dispute the debts reported on any and all reports successfully pulled, then when/if any debts are confirmed try to negotiate the balance down.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Tldr; Wife has bad credit, we want to buy a house, can't pull current reports due to incorrect identifying info, can't dispute negative items without new reports, worried attempts to correct "core" identity info will result in more roadblocks or fraud issues.
Submitted April 13, 2017 at 03:37PM by MyUserWasTakenAgain http://ift.tt/2orMQh0
