I tried other ways aswell which provided me other errors...
How do i fix this?

1. public Date stringToDate(String date) {
     DateFormat stampFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy");
   
     if(date.equals("null") == false) {
       date = date.replace("/", "-");
       try {
         //Date firstDate = stampFormat.parse(date1);
         Date returnDate = stampFormat.parse(date);
         return returnDate;
         //return Date = stampFormat.parse(date);
       }
       catch (ParseException e) {
         die("Problem with dates", e);
       }
     }
   }