This Mistake Will Bury You: When Credit Bureaus Falsely Declare You Dead

It isn't the most common credit bureau mistake, but when it shows up, the impact of being falsely declared dead on a credit report can be devastating to your financial and credit profile. Deceased credit report errors turn living, breathing human beings into paper ghosts- deceased on paper only. It may sound more ridiculous than alarming, but the consequences are real and tend to spread quickly, and it often requires significant work to dig yourself out of this data coffin.

Fortunately,  in your quest to return to the land of the living, you have a host of consumer legal rights to rely on, and easy access to the most powerful resource of all- a team of legal professionals equipped to enforce those rights and the ability to get started right away.

What Is a "Deceased" Credit Report Mistake?

It helps to understand that a deceased notation on a credit report is a tool used by the credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) to help lower the risk of someone's financial and credit profile being attacked and misused by identity thieves in the wake of their death. Identity thieves and fraudsters troll the obituaries, looking for targets. In the immediate aftermath of someone's passing, if the death hasn't been formally reported to the companies where they held accounts, it creates the potential for their estate to become a victim of identity theft. And if loved ones are distracted by grief and endless tasks, the crime can go undetected for awhile.

However, when a death indicator on a credit report shows up in the data of someone who is, in fact, alive and well, this protective tool ushers in a digital zombie apocalypse instead. The problem is increased because lenders mirror the error, spreading the news of your demise across your entire financial life like the town crier. So the impact doesn't remain localized to one credit report or one retail account, but instead reproduces with the speed of a gremlin doused in water.

And, to make matters worse, the opposite isn't true. When you witness a credit report error spreading and try to stop it in its tracks, corrections don't always multiply as quickly. Lingering, disastrous deceased reporting errors can continue popping up when you least expect it.

How a Deceased Error Kills Your Financial Life

The fastest way to kill a credit report is to be financially deceased. After all, ghosts can't do banking, buy houses, rent apartments, lease cars, get insurance, pay bills, be hired, or anything similar. So when the credit bureaus make a mistake as big as this one, your credit doesn't just decline, it flatlines. While any credit report error can affect loans, mortgages, and similar, the financial consequences of a deceased credit report are even broader- impacting everything, including having:

• Your access denied. Whether it's a checking, savings, credit card, line of credit, mortgage, personal or auto loan, retail account, or similar, you may find your accounts frozen due to credit report errors identifying you as deceased. This means you'll be blocked from access completely.
• Your benefits stopped. If you rely on Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, or any other form of public benefits program, they may be stopped.
• Your name added to the Death Master File. The Social Security Administration maintains a database of consumers who have died (the Death Master File), retiring Social Security Numbers so they don't remain active. By the time a deceased notation credit report error makes its way to the SSA, the hurdles in your path have just increased exponentially. You'll need to make an in-person trip to your local Social Security office, original identifying documents in hand, to prove you've been falsely reported deceased.
• Your applications rejected. Any ongoing or future applications for financial or insurance products, lines of credit, housing/rentals, or employment will likely be denied.
• Your mind stressed. Anxiety, stress, and sleeplessness are a common consequence of having a credit report mistakenly marked deceased.

How to Correct a Deceased Credit Report

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) gives you the right to dispute a deceased credit report error. This legal mechanism for enforcing credit reporting accountability also requires the credit bureaus to investigate your dispute.

To file a dispute over this type of mistake, most people will need to contact all three credit bureaus, file a formal written dispute, provide proof of life (including having to get a certificate of life from the Social Security Administration), follow up persistently and track down errors across other accounts, document every communication, and learn how to live as a zombie in the meantime...running on little sleep.

Be sure to file your dispute via certified mail, return receipt requested as a best practice for tracking your dispute and protecting your rights.

When the System Won't Listen, You Have Legal Options

Enforcing credit bureau responsibility can be harder than it seems at first glance. Credit bureaus have a habit of keeping you locked in a nonsense loop. You might file a dispute to fix a credit report marked deceased only to be ignored. Or worse, you might receive a response stating that the information has been verified as accurate because the credit bureau looked at the data available in its own system and confirmed that it says you're deceased. Confused by how that's an effective investigation or solution? You should be.

At Mistake.com, we assess your file, then dispute false deceased indicators by submitting legally solid dispute letters. We also track the timing and responses and escalate if needed. Meaning, if your dispute gets ignored or wrongly verified, we have a team of credit report lawyers who step in to file a Fair Credit Reporting Act lawsuit and demand immediate corrections.

And, we review and dispute these deceased credit report errors for free.

So if you've just woken up to discover that you're buried under 6 feet of false data about the status of your health, don't panic. We have the shovels to dig you out and the experience to bury the mistake instead...for good.

Undo your deceased reporting mistake today, at Mistake.com.

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