I recently defaulted on my checking account. How long will it be before my name is clear and I will be able to open a checking account again?
The Fair Credit Reporting Act allows negative information (such as an account closing under negative conditions) to be reported by credit reporting agencies for no longer than seven years. Whether an old report of account closing will haunt you for the whole seven years, is a matter of individual bank policy. A bank might stop considering negative information once it's three, four, or five years old. Another bank might weigh how negative the information appears (a large charged-off balance might weigh more heavily against you than a simple report of "closed for overdrafts"). There is one thing that you can do that might influence how your incident is viewed by prospective banks -- if there was an amount charged off by your former bank and you haven't taken care of it yet, contact that bank and make an arrangement to clear up the debt as soon as you can, and then ask the bank to update its report to the credit reporting agency (for example, ChexSystems) to reflect your having paid it off.
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