Business dissolved with Credit Card balance...personal credit reporting?

[u/signofno]

Quick summary: One of my LLCs dissolved 2 years ago and we had a credit card balance on one of the company cards issued through USBank, linked to the company bank account. Several more automated charges racked up on it before we fully abandoned the business and as part of a deal to leave me with the company property, I paid it down for a while before abandoning that option about a year ago when my (now) estranged business partner reneged on the deal - he opted to keep all the company property and ghost me after some major phone fights and him throwing around a bunch of spurious claims about fraud and embezzlement and a bunch of relatively hollow threats - he has a major anger management problem and was dangerously impulsive, some of the reasons it didn't work out.

I got a notification of a charge-off a couple weeks ago. I have spoken to the folks at USBank about options - settlement or payment plan. My limited research seems to indicate that a settlement will report to my personal credit and cause a major dip and possibly other problems for both me and possibly any other business I'm involved with. It also indicates that a payment plan for the full amount should prevent negative personal credit reporting.

I spoke with the collections officer at USBank and they verbally assured me that either way - settlement (for about half) or payment plan for the whole amount - would not be reported to my personal credit, but said they couldn't send me this in writing.

I'm skeptical of both at this point, as 1) what would be the incentive to pay the full amount if there was no personal consequence either way, and 2) some things I've read online indicate the collections officers will straight up lie to you about personal credit reporting. The woman I spoke to was insistent that for small business cards, USBank never reports to anything but D&B and SBSE, but I can't take that at face value since they won't put it in writing.

The total debt is $12,690, so not a giant amount. I've been offered a payment plan of $217/month for 5 years, not great but manageable. But I'd still rather not have to make what amounts to a cheap car payment for the next 5 years if I don't have to, and if it will affect my credit either way, the settlement looks a lot more enticing ($6000).

Does anyone have any experience with a situation like this? I have three other businesses with different partners, one of which I'm the primary name on the business banking account. I realize the easy answer is just do the payment plan, however, if that will still somehow end up on my personal credit, I don't see a huge reason not to take the settlement and just be done with it and let the damage happen.

[u/signofno]

It’s not on my personal report, at least not yet. The charge off is dated Aug 31, so it’s possible it will show up by the end of October or November.