I'll start this by saying I'm a 20 year old college student in central Texas, USA who does not know much about finance or really any of my options going forward with this. Here's the story:
Yesterday I received a call from a Discover employee telling me I had a bill from my Discover card that needed to be paid. I told him I did not have a Discover card. He responded with "So this isn't (my name) who lives at (my parents address)?" I told him I'd call him back. At the time, I was assuming it was a scam, but he'd given me the last 4 digits of the card and didn't ask for any of my personal information. After a few minutes of thinking about it, suspicion started to sink in so I decided to call my mother. I described the call and my confusion to her expecting to get the "it was just a scam, ignore it." response she would normally give me. She sounded very strange when she told me to just give her the number and she would look into it and straighten everything out for me. I got even more skeptical of the situation after I ended the call, so I called my older sister who is not on good terms with my mother. She told me to go on credit karma and look at what all is in my name. While making the account, they asked me a bunch of verification questions like "Your credit file indicates you have a mortgage loan opened in or around August 2013. Who is the credit provider for this account?" It also included an auto loan, installment loan, the bank card and my student loans. My sister told me some of those might be fake questions, and since I didn't know the answer to most of them, I went on experian and signed up there. They had similar verification questions, but did not have any questions about the monthly payment amount. One of them included the bank card and auto loan question, so I answered the only options that had been on both sites for each. I was able to sign up successfully. The Discover card is definitely in my name, however Experian did not show the auto loan or any of the other loans besides my student loans. I have a bank manager friend looking further into my credit file to see if those loans are real.
I was completely blindsided by all of this. Some of the more recent loans and the Discover card were opened in 2017, which means I was 19 and no longer a minor. I don't know if I need to press charges against them. I haven't been on the best terms with my mom and her husband since I was about 16. Any advice would be very much appreciated. I'm very scared right now and trying my best to think rationally and clearly. I understand that I'm not actually responsible for any of the loans taken out or the bank card, but I still feel like I'm about to lose my parents who have been somewhat supporting me through school. I don't understand why my mother would lie to me about the card if it was just a normal thing parents do. I'm not asking for relationship advice. I know this is not the place for that, and I need to decide what to do about my mother on my own. Any financial advice about what to do if that relationship goes wrong due to this would be appreciated!
Submitted August 01, 2018 at 01:30PM by ThoughtfulFoxx https://ift.tt/2LRp2RY
