Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Georgia

First, the reality - She is not ruining your husband's credit. His credit is being harmed because he is not making payments on his debt and it was his decision to turn over that to someone else. The solution is that he makes the payments, on time, as he is responsible for doing. Then get out of the bad decisions to get the car with a co-signer to begin with, and then making it worse by turning over the car to someone else and thinking there were going to make payments. If your husband is the sole owner, he should get the car back, refinance in his name only or just sell it and pay it off. If she is also a title owner, then she has as much right to it as he does and it is still a mess. The bottom line is that this is what happens with co-signers, trying to get someone else to make payments, etc. On another subject, there is no such thing as "not filing on" any debt in Bankruptcy. If she failed to disclose the debt and possible ownership in the car in her case at your husband's request, she committed a federal crime.

I would agree with Attorney Riddle. No one is ruining your husband's credit but him. He is doing that by his bad decisions. Never be a co-signer for someone else. Ever. If the borrower does not pay, then the co-signer pays. Regarding the current car, your husband is on the car. He is responsible for the payments. He never should have allowed the mother to pay directly. If he was going to do this arrangement, then he should have kept getting the bills and asked the mother for money each month to make sure that the bills were being paid. Your option now is to get the car and get caught up, assuming the car is titled only in your husband's name or in your and your husband's name.

The thing to do is to buy for cash a cheap vehicle so your mother has transportation. Or else get her a smart phone with the uber app. With a bankruptcy on her credit, she is going to have a hard time getting financing and even if she does, its going to be at an exorbitant rate. Time to face facts here - mama is a financial deadbeat. Having your husband help her out is enabling her to continue on her destructiive path and when she is finished destroying his credit, she will find another victim. Your mother has some kind of financial problem - she either cannot control her finances or she has some sort of problem - gambling, drugs, spending, alcohol. She needs help, but not help using other people's credit.

With regard to Mr. Riddle's comment about bankruptcy, I would generally defer to him but its not clear what happened. In bankruptcy, one must declare all assets and debts. The debtor keeps all assets in a chapter 13, but is given a 3-5 year period to repay the debts. In a chapter 7, one can still keep a car, but if it is financed, then some method has to be worked out for paying the car loan. The debt can be reaffirmed. So its not clear if the car was deliberately omitted or if it was included by the debtors who were permitted to keep the car. However, you claim the car was lost in bankruptcy, so what happened? The car lender would then have come after your husband for any deficiency since he was a co-signer. On the other hand, if she did not include the vehicle or was permitted to keep it, she still would have had a car. So your post does not make sense here, but the bankruptcy is over so it probably does not matter..