This is a long story but I'll try to skim the highlights. Ok.. here we go. My wife and I recently got married (Nov. 2001) She wanted a Victoria Secrets credit card and I told her to go a head and apply. I haven't been listening to Dave for more than a couple of weeks now so this was last year sometime. She was denied. Same thing when she tried to get a cell phone. We were clueless as to why. So we did the online credit report thing. Here's what we found out. My wife is now 27. Back when she was 18 she did a very silly thing. Her mother has terrible credit. So much so that she could not even get a checking account by herself. She sued someone and won 40k. She begged her daughter to co-sign a checking account for her, so my wife being nieve did so and the 40k was placed in the account. Needless to say my wife went away to college and my mother in law has a horrible gambling problem. Now years later we find that her mother had bounced NUMEROUS checks on the account and they are on my wifes credit report. Some of them had been paid off but two show they have not. And both of those have been reported like 5x each. My wife, furious called her mother, who claimed they had been taken care of. We call the collection agency on the report and they said it's still active. We ask who it was for and they told us. Apparently it was several years before and the hardware store where this was from had changed ownership. My wife calls the hardware store guy and he says he doesn't have a record and he'll call and get it taken off. The collections guy tells the guy he needs to put the debt back on the report, so the guy does so. It was just about off, and now it's back on fresh as of Sept. 2002. When my wife asks to get a copy of the check so she can see who's name was signed the collections guy refuses to send anything saying when she pays it he'll do that. My question is... should all this stuff be on my wife's credit even though she was unaware of any of it, and she did not sign any of the checks? yup her name was still on the account at the time it was closed back a few years.... though she didn't close it.. and really after the initial phase had nothing to do with it.... Here's the problem with being able to talk to the creditors. We now live in Vancouver, WA. The hardware store, and after looking, it looks like a convienient store also, are all back in North Dakota. So we've been trying to do this stuff by phone. On one of the talk radio shows yesterday I had heard that your never supposed to talk with the collections people on the phone as they record the calls and can be very dirty and use trickery, getting you to admit that the debt is partially your fault. Apparently if you admit on tape that any of the debt is your responsibility, even slightly, you've lost your leg to stand on. So I think we'll be writing a pile of letters. Should we just pay it and wait the 7 years for it to be gone... or dispute the stuff? Do we write the letters to the store people or the ornery collections people.
Should we just pay it and wait the 7 years for it to be gone... or dispute the stuff? Do we write the letters to the store people or the ornery collections people. Plainsmen ================== Click on this link below Validation & Estoppel letters : Then send the Validation letter to the CA. THE END ** *** ** LB 59 """""""""```~~~```'"""""""""
So if we get the original check and it has my mother in law's endorsement... does that validate that it should be on my wife's credit report??? Or is that validation that it should be dropped??? Either way wouldn't it show that my wife was not the check writer?? I'm a cop so I'm wondering... wouldn't it be like the law.... just because your on a joint checking account... if your not the one writing the bad checks and bouncing them all over... your not the one signing the checks... are you the one who should be in trouble and have your credit report trashed? And by the way guys... thanks a BUNCH for the links about validation letters and such... WAY helpful...
I'm a cop so I'm wondering... wouldn't it be like the law.... just because your on a joint checking account... if your not the one writing the bad checks and bouncing them all over... your not the one signing the checks... are you the one who should be in trouble and have your credit report trashed? Plainsmen | ================== Are there 2 different laws handling this just opposite of each other? Good question!
You raise several different isues. 1: Your wife is JOINT OWNER (not co-signer) on a checking account, and her mother (the other owner) bounced a bunch of checks. Since your wife did not actually sign the checks, I would suggest she immediately dispute with the CRA's the trade lines as "not mine". The CRA will check with the CA who will rubber-stamp a "verified" to the CRA and the CRA will come back and say they verified that it is your wife's. Do this a second time. In the mean time, send a Validation Letter to the CA for the debt. At the end of 60 days, here's what the situation will look like: The CA has ignored the Validation Letter since they have absolutely NOTHING with your wife's signature on it. Being a JOINT OWNER of a checking account is NOT the same as being a Co-signer on a loan. Since, in most jurisdictions, bouncing a check is a crminal offense (it is here in Arizona), holding your wife as responsible for the checks would be like giving the passenger in a car a ticket for speeding (well, you WERE in the car, weren't you, and your body was hurdling through space at more than the speed limit, as was everything else in the car). The CRA will have contacted the CA twice for verifiucation that the debt is your wife's. The CA will have verified TWICE to the CA that the debt is, in fact your wife's. Now you have set up the CA to be the defendant in a $1000 lawsuit brought by your wife against them for KNOWINGLY and DELIBERATELY posting false info in her credit file. $1000 minimum damages per trade line (bring a separate suit for each trade line), and a separate suit for each trade line under FDCPA for maintianing the trade line while refusing to validate, in violation of FDCPA. I think that will get the CA's attention. 2: Your wife will have a problem opening bank acounts for about the next 5 years because she has probably been blacklisted on Chexsystems. This, unfortunately, is hers since she was co-owner of the account. If you need to get around that, just open the account without her, then add her on later. 3: The CA, when they put the trade line back on her CRA file with a 2002 status date committed a cardinal no-no of re-aging the account. This is a separate violation of FCRA and if I were your wife I woild immediately file suit under FCRA for $1000 per re-aged account. Do not pass Go, DO collect $1000 per re-aged trade line.
I'm a cop so I'm wondering... wouldn't it be like the law.... just because your on a joint checking account... if your not the one writing the bad checks and bouncing them all over... your not the one signing the checks... are you the one who should be in trouble and have your credit report trashed? Plainsmen | ================== Are there 2 different laws handling this just opposite of each other? Good question!
I'll answer that question ina way a cop would understand. You see a car driving down the road and the driver is speeding 20 MPH over the limit. You pull the car over and take the driver's license, registration and insurance card. The car is registered in the passenger's name. Who gets the speeding ticket? The driver, obviously. The passenger was not in control of the car. Same principle. Being joint owner ofa checking account makes you responsible TO THE BANK for the NSF fees, and to Chexsystems if the bank closes teh account, because you took liability for the performance of the account. BUT, you did not write any of the checks that the merchants who got stuck are trying to collect on. Your ID was not taken, you weren't even in the store. I can't concieve of any court of Law or Equity that would hold a person liable, either criminally or civilly, for checks that someone else wrote that bounced.
