McMillan Law's office is in Tampa. I represent people in Fort Myers and everywhere else in Florida, and the free case review happens by phone or online, so you don't have to drive anywhere to get started.
Last reviewed October 10, 2026 by Jackson McMillan, Florida attorney
Hurricane payment pauses that came back as late payments
Hurricane Ian in 2022 and Hurricane Milton in 2024 damaged many homes in Lee County. If you called your lender after either storm, you may have gotten some breathing room: a forbearance on the mortgage, a deferment on the car loan, or a few months with no payment due.
The trouble often shows up later. You apply to refinance, or to rent while repairs drag on, and the report shows a string of late payments for exactly the months your lender said you could skip. Sometimes the deferred amount is listed as past due. Sometimes a single missed month is repeated across the whole pause.
Payment history carries a lot of weight in a credit score, so a run of wrong lates can be the difference between approval and denial. The good news is that this kind of error usually leaves a paper trail. My page on late payments reported wrong covers the other ways payment history gets misreported.
The line Florida's federal courts draw: paper versus phone calls
Florida is part of the Eleventh Circuit, the federal appeals court that sets the rules for credit reporting cases here. In 2024, in a case called Holden, it held that a dispute claim against a lender needs an error that is objectively and readily verifiable. If proving the error means first deciding what an agreement really meant, the claim gets much harder.
For hurricane relief, that splits cases into two groups:
- Stronger: a letter, email, or online notice from the lender approving the forbearance or deferment, with the months it covered. If the paper says no payment was due in October and the report says you were late in October, anyone can check that.
- Harder: a phone call where someone told you not to worry. That turns the dispute into an argument over what was promised, which the Eleventh Circuit treats differently from a plain factual error.
If all you have is a phone call, look harder before you give up. Monthly statements showing no payment due, or a due date the lender moved, may help prove the pause was real. Notes with the date and the name of the person you spoke with help too. I'll tell you honestly which group your paperwork puts you in.
What the lender and the bureaus must do once you dispute
Your rights here come from the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). You dispute with the credit bureau, and the bureau then has 5 business days to hand your dispute and paperwork to the servicer or lender. That company must then investigate, consider what you sent, and correct or delete any late mark it can't verify, with each nationwide bureau that receives its data (15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2(b)).
The Eleventh Circuit has also made clear that this investigation has to be a real one, not a quick check that the late code matches what the lender reported. A call or letter to the servicer alone doesn't trigger that duty you can enforce in court, so send the dispute to the bureaus and copy the servicer.
Upload the forbearance or deferment paperwork and the report page, and I'll tell you whether the late marks are the kind of error the FCRA reaches before you spend weeks disputing.
Rebuilding in Lee County and across Southwest Florida
I represent homeowners and renters in Fort Myers, throughout Lee County, and elsewhere in Southwest Florida whose credit took a second hit from the paperwork that followed a storm. That includes people connected to Florida Gulf Coast University, from students with a first car loan to staff paying a mortgage.
A lot of people in Fort Myers disputed a storm-era late payment once, got a "verified" result, and let it go. That may not be the end. The Eleventh Circuit held in Milgram (2023) that a new dispute creates new investigation duties and can start a new two-year period to sue. A carefully documented dispute today, with the relief letter attached, gives the lender a fresh obligation to get it right. Old failures still may fall outside the window, and the five-year outer limit doesn't stretch, so date everything.
If your case goes to court, Florida state courts, including the Twentieth Judicial Circuit, require a concrete harm just as federal courts do. A late mark that a lender saw and acted on, such as a denial or a higher rate, is that kind of harm.
What a wrong storm-season late payment can be worth
If the bureau or servicer is careless with your dispute, the FCRA lets you recover actual damages. For a Fort Myers family after a hurricane, those can include a higher rate on a repair loan or refinance, a lease you lost, extra interest, the cost of temporary housing while you waited, and the stress of fighting your lender while the house is still drying out.
A willful violation, including one made with reckless disregard, can be worth statutory damages of $100 to $1,000 instead of the losses you can document, plus punitive damages. What usually drives the value is timing: a wrong late sitting on your report the week a lender pulled it is a very different case from one nobody saw.
Under the FCRA, a winning consumer's reasonable attorney's fees and costs are charged to the company. You don't pay me unless you win. I take these cases on contingency: no attorney's fees and no case costs owed to me unless you recover money. If a case is lost, a court can sometimes order the losing side to pay the other side's court costs, and some Florida laws, including the security deposit and deceptive practices statutes, also let the winner recover attorney's fees from the loser. I explain that risk before anything is filed, and every term is in a written agreement before you sign. The full rules are on my page about credit report errors and what you can recover.
Fort Myers deadlines that matter now
- Within 60 days of a denial, ask the bureau named in the lender's letter for your free report.
- 5 business days for the bureau to pass your dispute to the servicer.
- 30 days for the bureau to finish, or 45 after a free annual report. New information sent in that first month can push it out up to 15 more days.
- 2 years after you discover the violation is your deadline to sue, with a 5-year cap.
- 7 years is generally how long even an accurate late payment can be reported, so a true late from Ian in 2022 can generally show until 2029.
What to gather this week
- Find the relief paperwork: the forbearance or deferment approval, emails, and any online account notices from the lender.
- Pull the monthly statements for every month the report shows as late.
- Pull all three reports and note each bureau, month, and late level reported.
- Dispute by certified mail with each bureau, naming each month and stating that no payment was due under the attached agreement. My credit report dispute guide includes a sample letter.
- Keep the harm: denial letters, rate quotes, and lease rejections, with dates.
- Send it to me. Upload your relief letter, your reports, and whatever the bureaus sent back. The free case review tells you whether those Fort Myers late marks are worth a fight.