I’ve heard of parents taking out loans/credit cards in a child’s name, spending all the money, and leaving the child to repay the debt. Did this happen to you? How did you deal with it?

My mom did this to my sister. But that was only utility bills when my sister was around 13. My sister only found out when she eventually signed up for the same utilities and was told she owed past bills. Those were easy enough to clear up by noting that she was only 13.

My friend Bill on the other hand was 18 and had just graduated and his dad (a heroin junkie) got tons of credit cards in his name. I think he owed 10K to Sears alone. They also shared the same name. But my friend was the third. So if/when they checked ID it matched. All in all I think the dad racked up about 50K in credit cards.

Bill contacted the companies and they said the only recourse was to get the police involved which he was unwilling to do. So he just suffered with shitty credit for many years.

I haven’t personally heard of it happening to anyone. It would take a great deal of work to clean up your credit if it happened, but you could eventually get it cleared up. Legally, negative information more than seven years old from the date of last activity-ten years for bankruptcies- must be removed from your credit report.

I don’t know how you would deal with it emotionally. I imagine it would be very hurtful and a big disappointment, to put it mildly.

Contact the police!
It is identity theft, most common kind is in the family or friends.

That is a new one to me.
I can’t imagine screwing over your own kids like that.

A coworker and I were having a contest about who had the worst mother in law. She won hands down because her MIL did this to her own son. He prosecuted. Now most of his family doesn’t speak to him anymore.

My parents had very good credit, so I never had this problem. All the articles I see about it say contact the authorities and prosecute them.

@keobooks Maybe he should have asked the relatives to pay off the debts for him and get his good credit back.

Yeah, it’s been a tough situation. My friend doesn’t want to prosecute any family members, so it looks like the only option is to work on paying back the loans.