My mother, who is 96 years old was talked into obtaining a credit card by her granddaughter, my neice. Her neice was suppose to make all the payments. The neice abused the card. She charged many things, got cash, etc. The charges are around $5,000.00. She is behind in payments, the credit card company is constantly calling my mom. My mom is terribly upset. She is not able to make the payments. The granddaughter is behind in making payments. She can't even keep the total amount below the maximum. She makes some payments, but the total debt is not being reduced. Can anything be done? Why did the credit card company, Discover, even give a credit card to a 95 year old woman who had no assets? Please advise.
I'm really sorry to hear this has happened. Unfortunately, if your mother applied for the card and agreed to let her use it, then I believe your mother would still be liable for making the payments, whether she had a side agreement with her granddaughter to pay the bills or not. I really don't see any way around this unless you were to take some sort of legal action against her. I'm not a lawyer, so if you're serious enough about this, you may want to talk to a good lawyer about her rights and verbal contracts, etc. Credit card companies essentially rely on credit scores when providing credit, not assets. So, your mother probably had good credit (and a loooong credit history), and that's why she was approved for a card.
Why hasn't the grandmother closed the account? The first thing to do when you realize you are (or someone else is) digging yourself into a hole is to stop digging. If the card is in the grandmother's name, she should be able to call Discover up and close the account to all future charges. She'll still need to make payments and the interest rate will be sky high, but at least the balance should start to decline (as long as she makes more than the minimum payment).
