How Long Does Delinquency Stay on Your Credit Report?

A delinquency stays on your credit report for seven years in most cases, measured from 180 days after the first missed payment that was never brought current. That works out to roughly seven and a half years from the day you first fell behind. Bankruptcies run longer, medical debt has its own rules, and a few narrow situations let older items surface, but for the typical late payment, collection, or charge-off, seven years is the answer to how long a delinquency stays on your credit report.

The Seven-Year Rule

The Fair Credit Reporting Act prohibits credit bureaus from including most negative information once it’s more than seven years old. That covers late payments, accounts sent to collections, debts charged off by the original creditor, foreclosures, and short sales.¹ Almost every adverse item on a consumer report falls under this cap. Bankruptcy is the significant exception, addressed below.

When the Clock Actually Starts

The seven years does not begin on the day you missed a payment. For any account that goes to collections or gets charged off, federal law adds 180 days to the date you first became delinquent and never caught up. That date, called the date of first delinquency, anchors the entire calculation.¹

So a payment you missed in January and never made up starts the seven-year clock around July of that year. Add seven years to that July date, and you have the approximate removal date. Total time from the first missed payment to the item falling off: about seven and a half years. Congress built in the 180-day buffer so the deadline is calculated the same way regardless of how quickly a creditor sends the account to collections.

A single late payment you later brought current is treated differently. If you missed a payment in March and caught up in April, that late-payment notation stays for seven years from the missed payment itself. The 180-day add-on only applies when the delinquency progresses to a collection, charge-off, or similar action.

Paying, Settling, or Selling the Debt Does Not Reset the Clock

The reporting deadline is locked to the original date of first delinquency. Paying the balance, settling for less than what’s owed, or having the account bought by a debt collector does none of the following: it does not restart the seven years, extend them, or move the removal date.¹ The status field on the tradeline may update to “paid” or “settled,” but the drop-off date stays put.

Debt buyers are expected to obtain the original delinquency date from the previous creditor and report accordingly. When a collector reports a years-old debt as if it just became delinquent, that’s called re-aging, and it violates federal law. Re-aging is one of the more common credit report errors and one of the more worthwhile ones to dispute, since it can add years of damage that shouldn’t be there.

Bankruptcy Runs Longer

Bankruptcy is the main exception to the seven-year rule. Federal law allows credit bureaus to report a bankruptcy for up to ten years from the date the court entered the order for relief, and the statute doesn’t distinguish between Chapter 7 and Chapter 13.¹²

In practice, the three major credit bureaus typically remove a completed Chapter 13 case after seven years from the filing date, since Chapter 13 filers repaid at least part of their debts through a court-supervised plan. Chapter 7 filings usually stay the full ten. If a Chapter 13 lingers past seven years, it’s worth checking whether it should already be gone.

Individual accounts included in a bankruptcy follow their own seven-year timeline from the date of first delinquency, so the bankruptcy notation itself can outlast the tradelines it swept up.

Medical Debt

Medical collections have separate protections. Since 2023, the three major bureaus have voluntarily agreed not to report medical debt less than a year old and to exclude any medical collection balance under $500 entirely.

A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule finalized in January 2025 would have banned medical debt from credit reports altogether, but a federal court vacated that rule in July 2025, finding it exceeded the agency’s authority.³ The voluntary bureau policies remain the primary protection. Medical collections above $500 that are more than a year old can still be reported and follow the standard seven-year timeline.

When Old Delinquencies Can Still Appear

The seven-year cap has statutory carve-outs for high-value transactions. Credit bureaus are allowed to report adverse information older than seven years when your report is pulled in connection with:

A loan or credit line where the principal is, or is reasonably expected to be, $150,000 or more.
Underwriting a life insurance policy with a face amount of $150,000 or more.
Employment screening for a job paying $75,000 or more per year.

These thresholds are written into the statute and have not been adjusted for inflation.¹ A lender or employer working within those categories could see delinquencies older than seven years, though most focus on recent history regardless of what the law permits.

The Damage Fades Long Before the Record Disappears

A delinquency doesn’t carry the same weight for the whole seven years. FICO and similar scoring models weigh recency, severity, and frequency. A single 30-day late payment from five years ago on an otherwise clean file hurts far less than a recent one.⁴

Because of that recency weighting, most people see substantial score recovery within two to three years of a delinquency, provided everything else stays current. The record is still visible to any lender pulling the report, but the scoring math is designed to reward recent good behavior long before the seven years are up.

Finding Your Removal Date and Fixing Errors

You can see when a negative item is scheduled to drop off by pulling your reports from the three major bureaus. Each delinquent tradeline typically shows a date of first delinquency and an estimated removal date. All three bureaus have permanently extended free weekly access to your reports at AnnualCreditReport.com, and Equifax offers six additional free reports per year through 2026 on the same site.⁵

When you pull the reports, do the math yourself. Take the date of first delinquency, add 180 days, then add seven years. If the estimated removal date sits further out than that, you likely have a re-aging error worth disputing.

File the dispute directly with the bureau showing the incorrect information, either online, by mail, or by phone. The bureau generally has 30 days to investigate, though the window can stretch to 45 days if you file after receiving a free annual report or submit additional documentation during the investigation.⁶ If the investigation confirms the information is inaccurate or can’t be verified, the bureau must correct or delete it. File separately with each bureau showing the error, since they don’t share dispute results with each other.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports
2
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Long Does a Bankruptcy Appear on Credit Reports
3
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB Finalizes Rule to Remove Medical Bills from Credit Reports
4
myFICO. Does a Late Payment Affect Credit Score
5
Federal Trade Commission. Free Credit Reports
6
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Long Does It Take To Repair an Error on a Credit Report