What impact do public records have on your credit score? Do I have a credit score without any credit?

Question

I am trying to understand my credit situation better so I can fix it. I get a lot of conflicting responses and am not sure what to do.
I have a huge child support debt from about 9 years ago (I am 30) when I was in a situation in which I was unable to work. It is about $16,000. I have been paying on it for years and finally got the interest dropped last month so that my payments actually affect the balance.

I have a judgement to my apartment complex for about $3,000 (which was paid in full.) This was from last year.

I have never had a credit card and have no loans or anything. My credit report lists my 3 child support cases as my 3 accounts.

When I paid for my score it said I was unable to be scored, though in an answer to another question I asked someone said I do have a credit score but its probably low.

Will the public records affect my score and how so. Since I paid the judgement to my apartment complex in full, should that be refected somewhere on my report?

Answer 1

Where did you get the credit reports? Judgments are usually listed on your credit reports but not always.

If all you have are negatives your score is probably so low it is below the lowest score of 350 ( I believe ).

Answer 2

You pulled a credit report which said you have no score, so for now that is the best evidence you have. Not what someone said. That being said there are a few different credit scores in the market. FICO is the largest and most widely used. So maybe someone gives you default score, meaning if X the lowest score you would get a score close to X as you don't have any credit.

Based on the info you provided I would expect you to not have a credit score. I see a certain percent of applications do not have a credit score.
If you had a credit score then the public records would be a negative and reduce your score.
The apartment complex judgement may or may not be there. No need to speculate, go to FTC.gov you can pull one free report from each of the three agencies per year.

Answer 3

ANY judgement like this will cripple your credit score. And it takes anywhere from 5-10 years (pending on a variety of factors) for the apartment complex judgement to clear. But it should show it was paid off.

And you pissed someone off badly on this child support matter.

you really need to get your life in order talk to a credit consler tommorrow and go from there.

Answer 4

The support should be on your report. You didn't go into the apartment thing to deep so there is no way of telling. "unable to score" means you have too little information, over too little time to get a decent reading of what your score should be.

Answer 5

you should review the report yourself.

your balance for the apartment place should be zero.

you need to apply for other credit cards and get them to start reporting good information about you.

you are getting judged from two old report cards and no new teachers are reporting.

you have to get some new credit cards and start making payments on time.