I am looking for a little guidance before I hit submit on my application for a public trust moderate risk position.
As far as the background information goes… I fled it a relationship riddled with domestic violence in California for my home state on the East Coast in April 2016. My ex was physically and financially abusive and I truly believed if I didn’t (even with nothing but my clothes) he might actually seriously hurt me or get me in criminal trouble for the things that he was doing. So I left with nothing.
A couple weeks after returning to the East Coast I was in a horrific car accident. I spent some time in a shock trauma unit after suffering a traumatic brain injury, lung contusions, fractured ribs, and a broken hip. The worst part is I had to quit my job in California and did not have a new job so I was completely uninsured.
It took about seven months for me to be able to be fully functioning again to the point where I could get a job. And I did get a job in January 2017. However at this point, I was already in a tremendous amount of credit card debt. Some of the debt was from when I was preparing to leave and actually leaving California (hotels, gas money to drive cross country, food, etc) but a good portion of it was to pay for me to live during the time that I was recovering. The job that I received was not as well paying as the one I had in California and definitely not enough to cover the medical bills and credit card bills I had accrued. I became delinquent on several credit cards outside of the seven-year window. After about a year of trying to pay it off without assistance, I contacted a debt consolidation company in 2018 that negotiated settlement on all of the outstanding credit card accounts that I had. I paid all of those settlements in full and on time and have since paid off the consolidation loan debt.
None of those debts appear on my credit report as of January 2024 or June 2024. However, I received 1099-C’s for the cancelled debt in 2019. And my IRS transcript indicates that the remainder of those debts were cancelled.
And the biggest part of me is telling me to be honest and list them even though they will not appear on my credit report because there is still evidence of it happening on my IRS transcripts. But a smaller part of me is telling me to leave it off.
I have some other financial issues that I will have to address on the form but I would like to reiterate that any sort of delinquency‘s I have ever had are at least five years old or older and I am currently in good status with all of the financial accounts that I have with a pretty decent credit score.
I don’t want to lose out on this job because of poor financial decisions (that I tried my hardest to rectify) six years ago. Any guidance anyone can give me is sincerely and greatly appreciated.