Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in North Carolina

NEVER NEVER co-sign anything, not even for your mother. You are persuading the lender to make the loan based on these assurances. It is a red flag when someone needs you to co-sign as it means that they have lousy credit (in which case you should not do it at all) or that the person has no credit (in which case you should not co-sign and let them work to establish credit). When you co-sign, you are telling the lender that if the other person does not pay, you will pay.

Your options at this point are to pay the loan to protect your credit and sue the person whom you co-signed for. Whether you will recover anything or not is questionable. If they live in NC, there is no wage garnishgment and they may or may not have assets that can be seized. If you sue in small claims in NC, it can only be for amounts of $5000 or less and you can only sue in the county where the person lives. If they don't live in NC, you may have to sue them in the state where they live. In such case, I would recommend getting a lawyer. Other states do allow wage garnishment so you might have better luck collecting if they lvie out of state.

Short of suing, you could try to get the person to do a three-way conversation between you, the person and the lender and see if they will remove your name, but I doubt they will. You could try asking the person what is going on and seeing if they are able to pay. However, if the person has stopped paying, it means either that they have lost their job or have some other financial hardship or that they are a loser and just move on to new victims who will help them out, leaving your credit in tatters.