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FCRA 7-Year Rule Explained: What Falls Off, and When

The FCRA 7-year rule decides when most negative items have to fall off a credit report — but the clock runs from the original delinquency date, not the date you stopped paying or the date the account hit charge-off. Here is what ages off in seven years, what gets ten, what does not age off at all, and what to do when an item should have dropped and didn't.

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The FCRA 7-year rule is the federal cap on how long most negative items can sit on a credit report. But the clock does not start where most people think it does — it runs from the original delinquency date, not from the date you stopped paying, not from the charge-off date, and not from when a collector bought the debt. Knowing the difference matters because misreading the start date is the single most common reason a stale item lingers on a report past the limit.

This guide covers where the rule lives in the statute, how the original delinquency date is calculated, what ages off in exactly seven years, what gets ten, what does not age off at all, and what to do when an item should have dropped and didn't.

Where the 7-year rule lives in the statute

The rule is at FCRA § 605, (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1681c). The statute sets specific reporting-period caps:

Cases under Title 11 (bankruptcy): 10 years from the date of entry of the order for relief, generally the filing date.
Civil suits, civil judgments, and arrest records: 7 years, or the governing statute of limitations, whichever is longer.
Paid tax liens: 7 years from the date of payment.
Accounts placed for collection or charged to profit and loss: 7 years.
Any other adverse item of information: 7 years.

The collection-account clock runs from the "commencement date of the delinquency which immediately preceded" the collection action — that's the original delinquency date, the anchor for everything else on the account.

The CFPB enforces these caps under (https://www.consumerfinance.gov/compliance/compliance-resources/other-applicable-requirements/fair-credit-reporting-act/). The FTC's enforcement page also notes the exceptions: in credit, insurance, or employment transactions of $150,000 or more (or jobs paying $75,000 or more) the bureaus may report older items, and federally guaranteed student loans have separate reporting periods under the Higher Education Act.

How the original delinquency date actually works

The original delinquency date — the Date of First Delinquency, in CRA shorthand — is the date your account first went 30 days past due in the chain that ultimately led to charge-off or collection. Per (https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/how-to-determine-accounts-original-delinquency-date/), it appears on your credit report as a separate field and may be 6 months or more before the charge-off date.

The order of events for a typical credit-card charge-off:

You miss a payment in January 2025 → the account hits 30 days past due in February.
You miss the next several payments → 60 days, 90 days, 120 days, 150 days past due.
The issuer charges the account off at 180 days past due, in July 2025.
The charge-off gets reported in August 2025.

The 7-year clock for the entire chain runs from the original delinquency date in February 2025. The account is required to fall off in February 2032 — not 2032 plus six months for the charge-off, and not seven years from when a collector bought the debt.

(https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/when-does-7-year-rule-begin-delinquent-accounts/), bringing the account current at any point in the chain stops the chain — but it does not erase older late entries. Each individual 30-day late payment ages off on its own 7-year schedule from the month it was reported.

What ages off in exactly 7 years vs longer

The seven-year items:

Most late payments (30, 60, 90, 120, 150 days past due).
Charge-offs.
Collection accounts — the account the original creditor wrote off, and the separate collection tradeline opened by the third-party collector. Both anchor to the original delinquency date.
Repossessions and foreclosures (anchored to the date the account first became delinquent leading to the loss).
Closed accounts that were closed in good standing — those can stay up to 10 years on Equifax and Experian per CRA policy, even though the FCRA doesn't require their removal at all.

The ten-year item:

Chapter 7 bankruptcy, from the date of filing.

Items with their own clock:

Chapter 13 bankruptcy: per Equifax's FCRA summary, the three nationwide bureaus voluntarily report Chapter 13 for 7 years from the filing date, even though the statute would allow up to 10.
Civil judgments and unpaid tax liens: technically 7 years under the statute, but all three nationwide bureaus voluntarily removed them in 2017 and 2018 and no longer report them at all.
Federally guaranteed student loans: separate Higher Education Act timelines; defaulted federal student loans can be reported for 7 years from a defined trigger that may be later than the original delinquency.
Hard inquiries: 2 years on the report, 12 months affecting FICO scoring.

Re-aging — and what to do when an item doesn't fall off on time

Re-aging is when a furnisher or collector resets the original delinquency date to a later one, extending the time the account shows on your report. The FCRA explicitly prohibits this. § 605(c) states the running of the period starts from "the commencement date of the delinquency which immediately preceded" the collection action — meaning a collector cannot reset the clock by buying the debt, by getting a payment, or by re-opening the file.

If you see an item on your report that should have aged off, the remedy is a § 611 dispute with the bureau. State the original delinquency date you believe applies, attach the supporting documentation (the oldest statement showing the first 30-day delinquency works best), and ask the bureau to verify or remove. The bureau has 30 days to investigate. If verification fails or the furnisher cannot produce a different original delinquency date, the item has to come off.

Stubborn cases — where the bureau verifies an item that you believe should have aged off — are exactly the kind of FCRA dispute that benefits from documented timestamps and, if necessary, the private right of action under § 1681n. Our (/how-long-do-late-payments-stay-on-a-credit-report) walks through the documentation flow.

What aging off does and doesn't fix

A common misconception is that aging-off equals score recovery. It doesn't, fully. FICO and VantageScore weight recent activity much more than old activity — by the time a charge-off is six years old, its score impact is already much smaller than it was at year one. The disappearance at year seven is the final cleanup, not the main score event.

What aging off does fix is the visibility problem. A landlord, an insurer, or a manual underwriter scanning your report won't see the item at all. For thin-file consumers building toward a mortgage or auto loan, that visibility matters as much as the score.

If you want the strongest possible report at the moment an item ages off, the run-up matters: keep utilization under 10% on revolving accounts, avoid new applications in the last 6 months, and don't close the oldest tradeline you still have open. The detailed plan is in our (/pre-mortgage-credit-prep-12-months-out).

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the 7-year clock start at the charge-off date or the original delinquency date?

The original delinquency date. The FCRA at § 605(c) anchors the clock to "the commencement date of the delinquency which immediately preceded" the collection action — meaning the first 30-day late payment in the series that led to charge-off, not the charge-off date itself.

Can a debt collector reset the 7-year clock by buying the debt?

No. The FCRA explicitly prohibits re-aging. The original delinquency date stays with the account no matter how many times the debt is sold or transferred between collectors.

What happens if an item doesn't fall off after 7 years?

File a § 611 dispute with the bureau, citing the original delinquency date and attaching documentation. The bureau has 30 days to investigate; if the item can't be verified with a correct date, it must be removed.

Do late payments fall off individually, or does the whole account fall off?

Both, depending on what happened. Individual 30-day late entries fall off 7 years from the month they were reported. If the late payments led to charge-off and the account was never brought current, the entire account falls off 7 years from the original delinquency date.

Will my credit score recover the moment a negative item ages off?

Partly. By the time an item is 6-7 years old its score impact is already small under FICO and VantageScore weighting, so the bump at removal is smaller than people expect. The bigger benefit is visibility — manual underwriters and screening systems no longer see the item at all.

The bottom line

The FCRA 7-year rule is mechanical. The clock runs from the original delinquency date, the bureaus have to remove the item at the mark without a request, and re-aging is illegal. When something lingers past the date it should have dropped, the § 611 dispute process is the lever — and the documentation work pays off. If you'd rather hand the dispute work to a vetted company, (/#top-companies) on our independent reviews page.