How to get your share of the Equifax breach settlement
Nearly 150 million consumers may now be entitled to benefits under a proposed settlement reached by the government and credit-reporting giant Equifax Inc.
Q. I recently heard that credit bureau Equifax reached a $700 million settlement with the government over the data breach of the personal information it kept on millions of people. Unfortunately, I was one of those who had their files breached. How do I get my share of the settlement?
A. About 147 million Americans had their sensitive personal information exposed in the infamous 2017 data breach, which subsequently delayed or even scuttled countless real estate transactions. But don’t expect to get rich off your share of the recently announced settlement, because at least half of it will be paid to the federal and state agencies that worked out the deal. (I’m always amazed that the government takes such a large portion of these kinds of settlements for themselves, considering that their probes and prosecutions are already funded by taxpayer dollars.)
When the settlement terms were first announced in July, some victims were told they could get a $125 check or debit card if they rejected an option to receive free credit-monitoring in the future. But so many people signed up for the cash option that the portion of the fund set aside for payments must now be prorated, and claimants will get “nowhere near the $125 they could have gotten if there hadn’t been such an enormous number of claims filed,” the Federal Trade Commission now says.
For most folks, the best choice would be to take the settlement option that provides 10 years of free credit-report monitoring. At least four years of that would cover all three bureaus — Experian and TransUnion, as well as Equifax — and also include up to $1 million in identity-theft insurance. The remaining six years would apparently cover monitoring of only Equifax accounts.
You are also eligible to claim up to $20,000 in cash reimbursement for expenses you incurred related to the breach, such as fees you paid to freeze or unfreeze your account or for credit-monitoring services, losses from unauthorized charges to your financial accounts, and fees you may have paid to an attorney or other professional to clear up the whole mess.
If you’re among the earliest of filers, you might even qualify for up to $25 for every hour you spent dealing with the fallout from the breach, although you can’t ask for reimbursement for more than 20 hours, and the amount of cash that has been set aside for the payments is a relatively small $31 million.
The settlement is expected to receive final court approval later this year. You can find out if you’re eligible to be part of the deal and get more information by visiting www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com or by calling the settlement administrator at 833-759-2982.
REAL ESTATE TRIVIA
The latest large-scale data breach was announced about two weeks ago, when financial giant Capital One said a hacker had gained access to the personal information of about 107 million consumers who had applied for credit.
Q. What is a property’s “effective age”? A. Definitions vary, but it’s basically the age that a home appears to be based on its upkeep and regular maintenance, rather than its original construction date.
To illustrate, say that your home was built in 1960. You have taken meticulous care of the property over the years, repainted in 2017 and installed a brand-new roof this spring. The effective age of the home would be far less than its actual age would suggest.
Q. What is a “quiet trust”?
A. A quiet trust, sometimes called a “silent trust,” provides the same advantages as the basic living trusts that I sometimes write about.
The key benefit is that either type of trust allows you to quickly pass your home or any other assets that you put into the trust to your heirs after you die, rather than forcing them to suffer through the long and costly probate process that those who die with only a will are subject to.
The big difference is that with a quiet trust, the heirs won’t find out what you have planned to leave them until after your funeral. In other words, your plans are kept quiet until you’re dead.
Those who, instead, form a basic living trust typically share their plans with their heirs while they are still alive and often give copies of the trust to them.
Estate planners have said that many homeowners and others who choose to form a quiet trust rather than a basic trust do so because they don’t want their kids or other heirs to form a sense of entitlement. By keeping the heirs in the dark about what they will eventually receive, the trustmaker hopes that the heirs will work harder to save, perhaps further their education and make better spending and investment decisions.
Yet there are some drawbacks to keeping your dying wishes secret. One is that it may prevent you from having an open discussion with your heirs about how you would like to have your assets managed after you die. And if an heir suddenly gets a financial windfall after you are buried, there’s no guarantee that it won’t quickly be squandered unless the trust has rules that the heir must honor in order to get the home or other assets.
Send questions to David Myers, P.O. Box 4405, Culver City, CA 90231-2960, and we’ll try to respond in a future column.