The real timeline for how long negative marks last

Most negative items, including late payments, collections, charge-offs and foreclosures, can stay on your credit report for seven years. Bankruptcy can stay up to ten. The seven years do not all start on the same day, though, and that start date is what tells you when an item should disappear. Civil judgments and tax liens no longer appear at all.

The limits come from the Fair Credit Reporting Act, section 605, and the bureaus’ own policies, which in a few cases are shorter than the law allows. Here is how each clock works.

When each clock starts

Two lines need explaining. For collections and charge-offs, FCRA §605(c) starts the seven years 180 days after the delinquency began, which puts the legal outer limit at about seven and a half years after the first missed payment. Equifax and Experian both publish a shorter practice: seven years from the original delinquency date. For Chapter 13, the statute allows any bankruptcy to be reported for 10 years; the bureaus remove Chapter 13 cases at seven years voluntarily, and Equifax says the same for dismissed bankruptcies.

The federal rule from the CFPB that would have removed all medical debt from reports was vacated by a federal court in July 2025, so the bureau policies above, plus some state laws, are what apply. See how medical debt is reported now.

A worked example with real dates

Say a card payment was due January 15, 2020, and the account never caught up. The issuer charged it off around July 2020, about 180 days later, and sold it to a debt buyer in 2021.

• The original delinquency date is January 2020. Both the charged-off card account and the collection account must carry it: anyone who reports a charge-off or collection has to tell the bureau the month and year the delinquency began (FCRA §623(a)(5)).
• Under the bureaus’ stated practice, both entries come off around January 2027.
• Under the statute’s outer limit, the latest they could stay is about July 2027.
• The 2021 sale changes nothing. A new owner does not get a new date.

If you see a collection whose delinquency date is later than the original creditor’s, the debt may have been re-aged, which the law forbids. Dispute it with the bureau and send the original creditor’s statements as proof.

Why paying or settling does not reset the clock

Paying an old collection updates its status to paid; it does not restart or extend the reporting period. Whether paying helps your score depends on the model: FICO 9 and FICO 10 ignore paid third-party collections, while FICO 8, still the most widely used version, keeps counting them until they age off.

Do not confuse the reporting clock with your state’s statute of limitations on debt. The statute of limitations decides how long a creditor can sue you, usually three to six years depending on the state, and in some states a payment or a written acknowledgment restarts it. That restart affects lawsuits only. The credit report clock keeps running from the original delinquency.

Bankruptcy works the same way. Accounts discharged in bankruptcy keep their own seven-year dates and should show a zero balance and a status like “included in bankruptcy”; see Chapter 7 vs. Chapter 13.

The exceptions for large transactions

Section 605(b) lifts these time limits for reports used in three situations: a credit transaction of $150,000 or more, life insurance with a face amount of $150,000 or more, and a job paying $75,000 a year or more. In those cases a report can legally include older items.

How your score recovers before the item leaves

The item stays seven years, but its weight does not. FICO’s payment history category looks at how late the payment was, how many accounts show late payments and how recent they are, so a single 30-day late from five years ago, with clean history since, costs far less than the same mark from last year. The same logic of recency applies to collections and charge-offs as they age.

What speeds the recovery is new positive data: on-time payments on open accounts and low card balances. If the mark is an accurate late payment on an account with a long clean record, a goodwill letter to the creditor is worth trying. For a charge-off still on your report, see what a charge-off means.

Find the dates and dispute anything overdue

Pull your three reports at AnnualCreditReport.com and look at each negative account for the date of first delinquency or the estimated removal date. Then check:

1. Late payments older than seven years should be gone.
2. Collections and charge-offs should be gone seven years after the original delinquency date at Equifax and Experian, and in no case later than seven and a half.
3. No judgment or tax lien should appear.
4. A Chapter 13 filed more than seven years ago should be gone.

Anything past its date is inaccurate and can be disputed. The bureau generally has 30 days to investigate (45 in some cases) and must delete what it cannot verify. The CFPB’s dispute guide and our step-by-step dispute article explain the letter and the deadlines.