Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Pennsylvania

Do you want to put mom in jail? That is the real question. If you don't care because this was a sleazy thing for mom to do, then you need to go and file a police report tomorrow. You then take a copy of your report and make 3 copies of it and you send it to each of the credit bureaus and ask for a security freeze on your credit. Its good for 5-7 years.

You also need to tell the credit bureaus that you dispute each of the credit card and cable debts falsely created by your mother in your name. I would write as well to each of the creditors directly and send them a copy of your police report and ask them to send you a fraud affidavit which they will be happy to do. Once that is filled out and sent back to them they will take this off your credit report and you will not have to worry about the debt. It will then be up to the credit cards to prosecute your mother and because financial transactions like this are a crime, you will be visiting mama in jail come mother's day.

If you do not want your mother to go to jail, then you are going to be liable for the debt. Since it was a sleazy thing of your mother to do, what I would do is still write to the credit bureaus but freeze or put a security freeze on your credit. A complete freeze will definitely stop mama or anyone else from accessing your credit.

$3000 is not an insurmountable sum. Credit cards will all settle the debt. Your credit is going to be toast but at least you can enjoy visiting mama outside of prison. You just start saving what you can and when you have at least 50% of a debt saved up you can settle that debt and work your way down.

If I knew who your creditors were I could tell you which accounts to focus on for now - Discover, Citi and Capital One accounts you need to worry about. Chase and Bank of America you don't. Still other creditors will sell debts to junk debt buyers like Midland Funding or Portfolio who will sue unless debts are resolved.

Resolving debts is what I do for a reasonable fee. If you are interested, you can email me for further details at [email protected].

If you are going to tackle on your own, you can get a good fact sheet on civil identity theft from www.privacyrights.org - fact sheets 17, 17a and 17d.