You really do need to get expert advice on this. Whether or not your mother is responsible for her husband's credit card (and various other expenses) is dependent upon the laws of your state. Go and talk with a probate attorney.
I'd also add that talking to WAMU is useless. They are going to try to get you to pay the debt whether or not your are actually responsible. They will try any number of scare tactics under the sun to scare you into paying the bill when you may not need to.
Consult an attorney and then act.
ETA: dependent not defendant. sorry. LOL
I'd also add that talking to WAMU is useless. They are going to try to get you to pay the debt whether or not your are actually responsible. They will try any number of scare tactics under the sun to scare you into paying the bill when you may not need to.
Consult an attorney and then act.
ETA: dependent not defendant. sorry. LOL
1) Are you really a legal expert (translate: LAWYER) and fully qualified to give this advice unconditionally?
You give unconditional advice with a guarantee that no harm will come to the wife if she follows your advice. You go so far as to say that your suggestions will provide insurance for her.
You have the nerve to try to bait me with the "Are you a lawyer?" question. On an anonymous message board the only credentials a person has is the community esteem that others confer on him after being part of the community for a long enough duration. The other members draw their own conclusions as to the merits of individual advice given on these boards.
I am not a lawyer and neither are you. Posing that question is just another example of your thinly masked animosity towards others. This is a credit card discussion board. Many here know the basic answers to the questions asked by the OP. I am as qualified as you are to state my opinion. I do not have to be a lawyer to know what I am talking about.
You keep saying contact a lawyer after first following your advice. That doesn't mean that you know what you are talking about.
Responsibilities for AUs and Joint owners are fully understood by most mature members in this forum. You seem to have a problem with my part of the discussion.
On the first page of this thread the posts and replies were going quite well even considering the change form AU to joint topics.
Stef37 made some awesome posts fully addressing the issues involved. You made some right on observations yourself.
By the time nodebtformeplease thanked everyone in the post of 10-26-2008 7:21 PM I thought that the thread pretty much covered all of the bases
I did think that if the OP's mom were to be stuck paying the debt, at least she might get some benefit from reopening the card with original good credit history. It was all I could add that might help mitigate the pain of having to pay off the debt. At that time we were still under the impression that it was a joint account.
stef37 made another very good post including a very informative link.
You felt compelled to make your "stick with what I said" post. The purpose of that particular post escaped me.
You are in fact so stuck with what you said that you fail to see that following the same advice for an AU is ridiculous.
The opening shot you took at me was rephrasing what Cleanmachine said. Your words were "Never concede responsibility for any debt." You subsequently advise OP's mom to make a few months' payments on a debt that she doesn't owe.....and then eventually find a lawyer. Just how does that advice make any possible sense at all?
Ever since Watchmann gave his opinion and I responded to it, You have deemed fit to flame both or us. You have taken cheap shots admonishing us that we were some how offending the OP's family. Neither Watchmann nor I was assuming that the family was trying to do anything wrong.
You were the person who suggested that maybe the OP's deceased father might have placed his wife on the CC illegally (without here knowledge). You furthermore made the cruel remark to Watchman about ever being in a situation when you know full well that he lost his father in law recently and had indeed been in a similar situation.
When you disagree with something someone else says has to say you accuse them of being insensitive to people who are going through stress full times.
Just because someone doesn't agree with you 100% you try to humiliate them and make accusations about them.
2) You don't even know whether`the individual in question lives in a community property state or not. If she lives in a community propery state she may be held responsible for this debt not because she in an authorized user but because she is the cardholders spouse!
Since she is not responsible as an authorized user, why make any payments at all? If she becomes obligated it as his spouse so why make any payments to a credit card that doesn't matter?
She simply makes no payments on the credit card at all and disputes the tradeline off her reports. She deals with her obligation of the debt when the bank presses the case against the estate or her as a spouse.
Making minimum payments on a closed account serves no purpose. It is unlikely that WaMu is offering the otion of making payments anyway. If the bank does offer payments it might be a new obligation that the spouse would be accepting as her sole responsibility.
3) The laws of each community property state differ.
Give me one example of a community property law ANYWHERE that says that a spouse must make payments on a closed account that has not yet been determined to be her responsibility.
4) They may haved moved from a community property state to a non-community property state or vice versa.
You keep moving from one irrelevant statement ot another.
It all matters!
The only thing that matters is that you don't care that the OP's mother might be wasting a whole lot of money and perhaps gets stuck with an unmemorable negative tradeline on her credit reports.
That is why I will stick with what I previously said:
What you said previously made sense if the account was a joint account. Playing around with a closed AU account is insanity. I don't have to be a lawyer to make that statement. No I am not a psychiatrist either.
I have been studying Credit and Credit scoring issues for over 8 years. Here is a secret. You can learn a lot in credit forums. You can even learn things some lawyers don't know.
Basic advice that even Newbies know. Dispute AU accounts off the credit reports. Problem Solved.
Continue to make minimum payments on the account until you can obtain competent legal advice from an attorney regarding the status of this account.
The status is closed with no contractual obligation for an AU or spouse to pay. Of course continuing to pay over time might incur an obligation that wasn't there before.
Do you know for a fact that the bank will allow the wife to make payments (minimum or otherwise)? How can you guarantee that the bank won't offer a payment plan that will obligate her to repayment of the whole debt?
Collections are frequently made by issuing a credit card with prior debt on it.
This is to protect you in the event that you are found responsible for the debt.Please explain how she is protected? The account's entire balance is due unless a new agreement is negotiated with the wife. If she is making payments, the bank can claim that there is an agreement to pay.
She is not protected from anything. She might be considered to have entered into a new agreement to pay her spouse's debt over a period of time.
You should be able to obtain proper advisement within a month and making a few payments on this account does not, in any way, increase your level of legal responsibility for the debt. This is cheap insurance against a possible credit disaster.
You are not only giving legal advice but also guaranteeing that no harm will come to the OP's mom if she follows your advice.
You are also an insurance man.
Get proper advice ASAP!
If OP's mom is going to make payments on a closed account that she has no responsibility for, she had better get some proper advice first. She sure isn't getting it in your posts.
@CreditAble wrote:1) Are you really a legal expert (translate: LAWYER) and fully qualified to give this advice unconditionally?
You give unconditional advice with a guarantee that no harm will come to the wife if she follows your advice. You go so far as to say that your suggestions will provide insurance for her.
You have the nerve to try to bait me with the "Are you a lawyer?" question. On an anonymous message board the only credentials a person has is the community esteem that others confer on him after being part of the community for a long enough duration. The other members draw their own conclusions as to the merits of individual advice given on these boards.
I am not a lawyer and neither are you. Posing that question is just another example of your thinly masked animosity towards others. This is a credit card discussion board. Many here know the basic answers to the questions asked by the OP. I am as qualified as you are to state my opinion. I do not have to be a lawyer to know what I am talking about.
You keep saying contact a lawyer after first following your advice. That doesn't mean that you know what you are talking about.
Responsibilities for AUs and Joint owners are fully understood by most mature members in this forum. You seem to have a problem with my part of the discussion.
On the first page of this thread the posts and replies were going quite well even considering the change form AU to joint topics.
Stef37 made some awesome posts fully addressing the issues involved. You made some right on observations yourself.
By the time nodebtformeplease thanked everyone in the post of 10-26-2008 7:21 PM I thought that the thread pretty much covered all of the bases
I did think that if the OP's mom were to be stuck paying the debt, at least she might get some benefit from reopening the card with original good credit history. It was all I could add that might help mitigate the pain of having to pay off the debt. At that time we were still under the impression that it was a joint account.
stef37 made another very good post including a very informative link.
You felt compelled to make your "stick with what I said" post. The purpose of that particular post escaped me.
You are in fact so stuck with what you said that you fail to see that following the same advice for an AU is ridiculous.
The opening shot you took at me was rephrasing what Cleanmachine said. Your words were "Never concede responsibility for any debt." You subsequently advise OP's mom to make a few months' payments on a debt that she doesn't owe.....and then eventually find a lawyer. Just how does that advice make any possible sense at all?
Ever since Watchmann gave his opinion and I responded to it, You have deemed fit to flame both or us. You have taken cheap shots admonishing us that we were some how offending the OP's family. Neither Watchmann nor I was assuming that the family was trying to do anything wrong.
You were the person who suggested that maybe the OP's deceased father might have placed his wife on the CC illegally (without here knowledge). You furthermore made the cruel remark to Watchman about ever being in a situation when you know full well that he lost his father in law recently and had indeed been in a similar situation.
When you disagree with something someone else says has to say you accuse them of being insensitive to people who are going through stress full times.
Just because someone doesn't agree with you 100% you try to humiliate them and make accusations about them.
2) You don't even know whether`the individual in question lives in a community property state or not. If she lives in a community propery state she may be held responsible for this debt not because she in an authorized user but because she is the cardholders spouse!
Since she is not responsible as an authorized user, why make any payments at all? If she becomes obligated it as his spouse so why make any payments to a credit card that doesn't matter?
She simply makes no payments on the credit card at all and disputes the tradeline off her reports. She deals with her obligation of the debt when the bank presses the case against the estate or her as a spouse.
Making minimum payments on a closed account serves no purpose. It is unlikely that WaMu is offering the otion of making payments anyway. If the bank does offer payments it might be a new obligation that the spouse would be accepting as her sole responsibility.
3) The laws of each community property state differ.
Give me one example of a community property law ANYWHERE that says that a spouse must make payments on a closed account that has not yet been determined to be her responsibility.
4) They may haved moved from a community property state to a non-community property state or vice versa.
You keep moving from one irrelevant statement ot another.
It all matters!
The only thing that matters is that you don't care that the OP's mother might be wasting a whole lot of money and perhaps gets stuck with an unmemorable negative tradeline on her credit reports.
That is why I will stick with what I previously said:
What you said previously made sense if the account was a joint account. Playing around with a closed AU account is insanity. I don't have to be a lawyer to make that statement. No I am not a psychiatrist either.
I have been studying Credit and Credit scoring issues for over 8 years. Here is a secret. You can learn a lot in credit forums. You can even learn things some lawyers don't know.
Basic advice that even Newbies know. Dispute AU accounts off the credit reports. Problem Solved.
Continue to make minimum payments on the account until you can obtain competent legal advice from an attorney regarding the status of this account.
The status is closed with no contractual obligation for an AU or spouse to pay. Of course continuing to pay over time might incur an obligation that wasn't there before.
Do you know for a fact that the bank will allow the wife to make payments (minimum or otherwise)? How can you guarantee that the bank won't offer a payment plan that will obligate her to repayment of the whole debt?
Collections are frequently made by issuing a credit card with prior debt on it.
This is to protect you in the event that you are found responsible for the debt.Please explain how she is protected? The account's entire balance is due unless a new agreement is negotiated with the wife. If she is making payments, the bank can claim that there is an agreement to pay.
She is not protected from anything. She might be considered to have entered into a new agreement to pay her spouse's debt over a period of time.
You should be able to obtain proper advisement within a month and making a few payments on this account does not, in any way, increase your level of legal responsibility for the debt. This is cheap insurance against a possible credit disaster.
You are not only giving legal advice but also guaranteeing that no harm will come to the OP's mom if she follows your advice.
You are also an insurance man.
Get proper advice ASAP!
If OP's mom is going to make payments on a closed account that she has no responsibility for, she had better get some proper advice first. She sure isn't getting it in your posts.
UTTER NONSENSE IN PART AND IN TOTAL!
