I apologize in advance for the wall of text, but this needs a little backstory.
My gf (24), let's call her Jamie, has lived a relatively sheltered life when it comes to finances. She got her first Discover credit card when she was 19 in college, like I did, with a credit line of $750. However, her mother, let's call her Carole, has been keeping that card to help her build credit. The idea was that her mother would use the card occasionally and pay it off appropriately to help raise her score and build credit history. Sounds like a win-win, right? Parents don't have to worry about their daughter over-spending, and the daughter gets to enjoy a good starting credit out of college. Great!
Fast forward 5 years later. Jamie now has her own job and has been living with me for a little over a year (we have been together for 4). One day, a discussion about credit starts up, and I ask her about her situation. She basically tells me what I told you in the first paragraph. I thought the situation sounded good for a teenager/student, but now that she is no longer living with her parents, I thought it might be a good idea to get the card back and start managing it herself. She agreed.
We decided to pull her free credit report from Experian, just to see where things stand, and we were kind of shocked. Her student loans didn't have any missed payments, but Carole was running a $699 balance on her credit card (93% utilization). Since the free credit report only shows one month, we couldn't see how long this was going on, but we assumed it wasn't new. It also doesn't show a credit score, but I knew we could get that later through Discover.
That was just the tip of the iceberg though. Back in college, Jamie had to take out a loan for 11k to pay for an extra semester of college. This was done through a local bank. Carole went with her to take out the loan, but the loan is only in Jamie's name. After working for a year, Jamie saved up some money, and decided she wanted to put a dent in this 11k loan. She made a verbal agreement in early 2018 with Carole that she would pay 6k towards the loan, and Carole would take over the remainder of it. Sounds like a good deal for Jamie.
Over the course of 3 months, Jamie sent Carole 6k to pay towards the loan by depositing the money in a joint account that both Jamie and Carole had access to (1500 in March, 3k in April, and 1500 in May). As soon as these amounts were deposited, Jamie noticed that Carole was taking it out in $500 increments from ATMs over the following few days. That was her first red flag. Why not just withdraw the entire amount from inside the bank? Jamie decided to ignore it and trust that her mother was doing the right thing with the money.
Back to the free credit report, we take a look at the balance on that 11k loan, and surprise-surprise, it's at 9k. Not remotely close to the 3-5k we were expecting. The 6k that Jamie sent to Carole was nowhere to be found. Understandably, Jamie is upset, so she takes it upon herself to call Discover and the local bank and get some statements the following day. Those statements only confirmed our suspicions. Carole has only been making minimum payments on the Discover card balance since April (including 4 late fees), and there was never a deposit made towards the bank loan outside of minimum payments.
At this point, Jamie texts Carole and asks if she can have her Discover card back so she can have control of the account. Carole says she will give it to her on the upcoming weekend because we already had plans, but when the time comes, she doesn't have it. A few days later, Jamie texts Carole again saying that she will stop by at noon the following day to get her Discover card. Carole doesn't send a response. When Jamie goes her parent's house the next day to meet Carole, she is not there. Only Jamie's father, let's call him Joe, was there. Joe said Carole's phone was broken last night, and she was getting it fixed today. However, Joe knew she was coming and had some papers set aside. Weird. Jamie confronts Joe about the Discover card and the loan. Joe denies any involvement and says he knew nothing about it.
Jamie decides to forcibly take over the Discover account and all of her student loan accounts and connect them to her main bank account. At this point, we completely paid off her Discover balance and requested a credit line increase. We also found that her credit score is 692. Not as bad as we thought, but it had potential to be so much better.
Later that night, Jamie received a very aggressive and offensive text from Carole stating that she is not a thief, berating Jamie, and insulting her for confiding in a boyfriend with her finances when we aren't married yet (???). I advised Jamie to ignore it for now and let both sides cool down. The next few days, Jamie tried to mend the fence with some texts, but they were either ignored or met with similar aggressive responses.
Yesterday, Joe met with Jamie at her work to give her a check for the remaining Discover card balance, and he informed her that they will pay back the 6k over the next few weeks/months (I guess it wasn't sitting in an outside account after all). Along with that, he started screaming at her in the parking lot, making similar points that Jamie got in the first text from Carole.
That's where we stand now. The relationship between Jamie and her parents has definitely been damaged to the point of not speaking, and now it has her questioning if what she did was right. Maybe she should have tried a couple more times to meet with Carole in person before taking over the accounts, but we both felt Carole was being evasive. Jamie really wants to keep a good relationship with her parents, like anyone, and this whole situation is really upsetting her. Something worth noting is that Jamie has a sister that is 7 years older, and she went through almost this exact same scenario. Jamie's sister has been a good point of reference and great support through all of this.
What else can we do? Did we do the right thing by taking over the accounts? The relationship mending isn't something for this subreddit, but we will take any advise if someone has been through something similar. Thanks for reading.
EDIT: Thanks everyone for the support! I will show Jamie after work today, and I'm sure it will cheer her up to know she is not alone and that she made the right decision.
Submitted July 30, 2018 at 09:22AM by Kroils https://ift.tt/2mPscrc
