Divorce Court Typo Hits Paycheck

Anyone who hasn't seen a copy of their credit report could take some advice from Eddie Taylor of Murfreesboro: Look at it.

Taylor discovered last year his own credit report wasn't what he thought it was after he learned that due to a typographical error, his paycheck was being garnished to pay child support to a Memphis woman he had never met.

"It's been a long, drawn-out process," both to clear the error from state records and to repair his credit rating, since he learned about the error in the middle of last year, he said. An error involving the mistyping of his middle initial in the office of a Memphis divorce court led to the trouble, he said.

State and local officials later admitted the mistake, but he was told he would have to contact the four major credit rating agencies on his own to remove the mistake from his record. Just last week, the Tennessee Department of Human Services sent a fax to the consumer reporting agencies notifying them of the error, but that was after he had gone through mountains of paperwork and spent two of his annual vacation days in Memphis to that very end.

"I had to do most of the work on my own to get this released," he said. "It was a long, drawn-out process to get this released from a typographical error that started 200 miles away from here. Why should I be out of time and money when they caused the problem?" Taylor wonders.
He believes he could have gotten the matter resolved much earlier if he had seen a copy of his credit report. "It's something that ought to be sent out once a year to everyone in the United States," he said. "You shouldn't have to beg for it or pay for it. That's our name and Social Security number and our credit report."

Read the entire article at The Daily News Journal.