FCRA Seven-Year Rule: Convictions, Bankruptcies, and Medical Debt

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act’s seven-year rule, most negative items on a background check or credit report must drop off after seven years, but the rule has enough carve-outs that the seven-year figure alone will mislead you. Criminal convictions have no federal time limit at all. Bankruptcies get ten years. And several categories of high-dollar transactions strip the time limits away entirely. The rule lives in 15 U.S.C. § 1681c, and the details below are what actually determine whether a specific item on your report is legal to keep reporting.

What the Seven-Year Limit Covers

The seven-year cap applies to most adverse civil and financial information. That includes:

Civil suits and civil judgments, measured seven years from the date the court entered the record or until the statute of limitations on the underlying claim expires, whichever is longer. If your state gives a creditor ten years to enforce a judgment, the judgment can stay on your report for those full ten years.¹
Paid tax liens, measured seven years from the date the lien was paid.¹
Collection accounts and charge-offs.¹
Eviction filings and landlord-tenant judgments, which are civil court actions and fall inside the civil-judgment category.²
Arrest records, whether or not the arrest resulted in charges and regardless of whether those charges were dismissed or ended in acquittal.¹
Any other adverse item that isn’t a conviction. The statute has a catch-all that pulls in anything not covered by a specific rule.¹

When the Seven-Year Clock Actually Starts on a Collection

This is the part people get wrong most often. The clock does not start when a debt is sold to a collection agency, and it does not restart when a new debt buyer opens a fresh tradeline. It starts 180 days after the date you first fell behind on the original account and never brought it current.¹

Congress wrote it this way to shut down a specific abuse: debt buyers picking up old accounts and re-aging them by reporting them as new collections. A collector who bought your debt three years after the original delinquency cannot report it as if it had just been opened. The seven-year period still runs from that original 180-day mark, no matter how many times the debt has changed hands. So if you’re staring at a collection tradeline on your report, the question isn’t when the current collector took over. It’s when you first went delinquent on the original account.

Criminal Convictions Have No Federal Time Limit

Arrests time out at seven years. Convictions don’t. The FCRA explicitly exempts records of criminal convictions from the seven-year cap.¹ A felony conviction from thirty years ago can legally appear on a background check today under federal law. This is probably the single most consequential distinction in the statute, and it is the one that most surprises people who assumed the whole record cleared at seven years.

Two things soften this in practice. First, some states restrict how far back employers and licensing bodies can look at convictions, and some require conditional job offers before criminal history can even be considered. If you have a conviction, the state where you live or are applying for work may give you protections that federal law does not. Second, many background check companies voluntarily cap conviction reporting at seven or ten years to reduce their exposure in stricter states. That’s a business choice, not a legal guarantee. A different screening provider may pull a longer history for the same employer.

Bankruptcies Get Ten Years

Bankruptcy filings can be reported for up to ten years from the date of the order for relief.¹ The statute makes no distinction between chapters. Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 both get the full ten years under federal law.

In practice, the three major credit bureaus remove Chapter 13 filings after seven years from the filing date because Chapter 13 involves a repayment plan and the bureaus treat it as less severe than a Chapter 7 liquidation. That is an industry convention, not law. If a credit bureau reports your Chapter 13 for the full ten years the statute allows, it is not violating anything, even though it isn’t the norm.

Medical Debt: Where Things Stand Now

The CFPB finalized a rule in early 2025 that would have removed medical bills from credit reports entirely, but a federal court in Texas vacated that rule in July 2025 on grounds that it exceeded the agency’s authority and conflicted with existing FCRA provisions.³ So the federal fix is off the table for now.

What remains is a set of voluntary policies adopted by Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion in 2022. The three bureaus agreed to remove paid medical collections entirely, wait one year (rather than six months) before an unpaid medical collection shows up on a report, and exclude medical collection balances under $500.⁴ Because those commitments are voluntary, they could be reversed. But at present, a paid medical collection or one under $500 shouldn’t be appearing on a report from any of the three major bureaus.

When the Time Limits Fall Away Entirely

The FCRA lists three situations where the seven-year cap, and even the ten-year bankruptcy cap, simply do not apply. If any of these fit your situation, a reporting agency can legally include much older information:⁵

Employment where the position pays an annual salary of $75,000 or more.
Credit transactions where the principal amount is expected to be $150,000 or more, which most commonly means mortgages.
Life insurance policies with a face amount of $150,000 or more.

These dollar thresholds have not been adjusted for inflation since the statute was written, so the $75,000 salary trigger now captures a far broader range of jobs than it did originally. If you are applying for a mid-level professional position, assume the employer’s background check can pull your full history without the seven-year time bar.

Disputing Something That Should Have Dropped Off

If an item is showing up past its allowed reporting period, or is simply wrong, you can dispute it directly with the reporting agency. The agency has to conduct a free investigation and resolve the dispute within 30 days.⁶ Sending additional supporting documentation during that window can extend the deadline by up to 15 days. Once the investigation ends, the agency has five business days to notify you of the results in writing.⁷

The written notice must include an updated copy of your report, a way to get a description of the investigation and the data furnisher contacted, and a reminder that you can attach a personal statement to your file if you still disagree. If the information is inaccurate or the agency cannot verify it, the item has to be corrected or deleted.

For items resulting from identity theft, there is a faster track. Give the agency proof of your identity, an identity theft report, and a list of the specific items that aren’t yours, and the agency must block those items within four business days.⁸

The practical takeaway: pull your reports before an application matters, count the seven years from the right starting date, and dispute anything that has overstayed its welcome. The rule works, but only if you use it.

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 Can Information, Like Eviction Actions and Lawsuits, Stay on My Tenant Screening Record?
3
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB Finalizes Rule to Remove Medical Bills from Credit Reports
4
TransUnion. Equifax, Experian and TransUnion Remove Medical Collections Debt Under $500 From US Credit Reports
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports – Section: Exempted Cases
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681i – Procedure in Case of Disputed Accuracy
7
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Long Does It Take to Repair an Error on a Credit Report?
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c-2 – Block of Information Resulting From Identity Theft