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I had a tax lien filed against me in the year after college b/c i was an idiot and did my taxes wrong - lived in florida, did my Michigan return, stuff was sent to my parents address and never forwarded on, yada yada. I end up taking care of it as soon as I become aware of it and set up a payment plan, problem is in Michigan if your payment plan is anything longer than 35 days they can file a lien against your personal property (my payment plan was 4 months b/c i didn't want to clear out my savings to pay a 1k tax bill) so, they file the lien. Anyway, paid it off ASAP but it isn't dropped from your credit report for7-10 years... otherwise my credit is pretty good, no past due balances and credit cards are all in check.

Now to Character and Fitness, there isn't a place to disclose something like this on the Michigan Application - it wasn't a litigation matter nor is it a bill on my file more than 90 days past due - these are the only possible places it could have gone and the only finance related things they ask. So, anyone have an idea of how i can document this on the application - my thought is one of the addendum pages, likely for the bills more than 90 days past due, and just explain it was an honest mistake and provide the lien notice and lien release, both from the state. Or, is it just not worth doing anything about since it doesn't fit into a category here, it isn't explicitly being asked for, and it will be on my credit report anyway so i'm not trying to hide it.


On top of this, does anyone know where they usually pull this stuff from? Is it the big 3 credit agencies (experian, Trans Union, Equifax) or do they also look at places like SageStream and Innovis? I'm just trying to make sure i report anything out there rather than them find something i'm actually not aware of.

Have you tried calling the Michigan bar? They are usually very responsive and helpful. The general rule is that it's better to disclose than to not disclose, so all things being equal, I'd submit the addendum, but I'd say it's still worth a call to them to double check.

I think they just pull a credit report from one of the Big 3, but with the recent proliferation of additional credit reporting agencies, that might've changed. You could ask them about this as well.

If unsure, just disclose. You can even begin by noting you are unsure if this applies to questions x and y because of reasons a and b, but in the interest of full disclosure, here is everything that happened, here is how it was resolved, I learned from my mistake and have resolved to never let it happen again. Of course never deflect blame, accept you made a mistake and have learned and not repeated.

With that you're going to be fine and it's doubtful anyone will give one craps at all. Disclose disclose disclose. In fact, amateur psychologist me says disclosing something not even called for makes you look less like you're hiding anything.