Long story short, my mother is an abusive, manipulative person and treats me very poorly, but she's smart and good at skirting around the law, leaving no concrete proof of anything illegal that I've found. Recently, I pulled my credit reports for the first time and found two separate installment loans as joint accounts that I was aware of, but not aware my name was on. For both, I was offered to co-sign by my mother "to build my credit" and provided my info to the salesmen with my permission to run a credit check out of mere curiosity, although I was leery of actually accepting anything shared with my mother. Both times, I remember getting the results, breaking off from the salesmen to discuss options, not wanting to be part of it, and that was that. What I don't understand is how I became a joint account holder in these instances - Was there a mistake? Was it assumed I automatically wanted in when providing my info? Did my mother forge my signature anywhere? Something else? My mother seems the most likely culprit, since I recognize the loans as hers, and I would hope that the process shouldn't put my name on a loan without me being aware. If it was her, and she did forge anything, I know she'll try and do whatever she can to say it was me, including trying to talk the salesmen into "remembering" things to back up her story as a "witness", as she is much better than I in on-the-spot conversations. Currently, she's paid the minimums every month on time, but my credit report also revealed a few credit cards that I'm an authorized user on with near max balances (one card I knew about, the rest not). Since she had always given the impression of being good with money, I'm now concerned she used my credit to get these loans and may stop paying them.
I think it's her doing, but I don't necessarily want to jump to conclusions since there seems to be a potential for it to be caused by other means. Are mistakes like these something that happens? Either way, I want it dealt with and off my credit report. I'm very close to being able to move out for good, so I'd prefer her to not be aware I know about the loans yet out of fear of retailiation. Is there anything I can do to address this that wouldn't alert her, or is my only real option the identity theft affadavit, police report option to at least say that it wasn't me (which I assume will alert anyone else on the joint account)?
If I do file an identity theft report, I'm also very worried about being believed, seeing as I did willingly provide all my information to get assessed for both loans, but didn't sign anything accepting the offers. As I mentioned, my mother is smart, sneaky, and better at conversation, plus she has resorted to trying to turn the law against me multiple times before with varying success. This also makes me afraid to pursue the identity theft option, because she could go nuclear and try to convince everybody that I did sign up for the accounts, sticking me with the consequences of falsifying a police report, etc. Financially, what's the worst that could happen to me if I don't do anything and just hope she continues paying? Currently, they're about $25k combined, so if I save up some extra money, I'd be able to pay quite a bit of them if I needed to, but not completely, or comfortably.
Submitted May 26, 2017 at 06:01AM by life540 http://ift.tt/2r4jN6C
