If you are settling your case in Housing Court and you cannot pay all the back rent you owe right away, you may consent to a judgment in order to get more time to pay. It is possible to negotiate a stipulation without a judgment. This stipulation might have a deadline for the arrears to be paid and require the landlord to file a motion to return to court for a judgment if you don’t pay by the deadline. Stipulations without judgments are difficult to get without aggressive bargaining.
Once the money judgment is paid, the judgment is satisfied. The landlord is required by law to give the court a satisfaction of judgment for the case file. Most landlords do not do this. You can write the landlord and ask that the satisfaction be filed, and if that doesn’t work, you can do an Order to Show Cause to ask the court to order the landlord to file one. Once filed, the satisfaction should appear on your credit report.This will only improve your credit score slightly.
Only vacating the judgment will make it disappear from your report. Once the judgment is paid, you will need to ask the court to vacate the judgment.The court is not required to vacate the judgment once you pay the back rent. It helps if your stipulation includes the following language that will make this easier. “Upon payment, the judgment will be vacated and the petition discontinued with prejudice.”