To make a long story shorter, she tried to clear this up with Chase directly to no avail. Chase sent the account to collections and they would call day and night, harrassing her and threatening her with a lawsuit which they did. There was a default judgment issued against both of us because my name was on the card as an authorized user. All of our bank accounts were closed including my husband and my checking account where his paycheck was being direct deposited. The only thing they couldn't take was my Mother's SS check and her house which is where we all live. Because of this my mother's health went downhill and I went into a deep depression. Six months after that my Husband lost his job. I'm still my Mother's caregiver and my Husband has a job. My Mother wanted to change her Will and the house to my name. And guess what? We got a letter from the Lawyers that brought the judgment against us and said we now owe over $32,090 and there is a lien on the house. Is there ANYTHING that we can do legally to somehow resolve this horrible situation?
Good luck,
Carol
You did report the incident as "Stolen" fraudulent, didn't you?
You are not responsible for debt that is fraudently applied to a credit card. Chase knows this. You must seek counsel.
Good luck with your situation!
Good Luck and Best Wishes
Whatever you do, everybody - you, DH, mom, anyone who lives at that address -
needs to have their own bank account. NO commingling of funds. Mom's SS is sacred and can't be touched as long as it is ONLY SS money (or any federal or RR retirement). Your $ can be attached as you were a co-owner on the CC account & you didn't prove to the court that wasn't the case at the hearing in which there was a default judgement. You want to make sure you keep the balance low. If that means every month getting a prepaid VISA or traveler's checks then do so.
Your DH could get a lein on his $$ if you are in a community property state. So the same for his $ as with yours.
About the house with a lien. Alot of this depends on how gutsy you are in waiting this out. 2 ways to approach: clear the lein now OR wait till she dies.
If you want to clear it now, you could then negotiate on the lein amount. If the house is crappy and not worth much let them know that and negotiate down. This you can work hard because the collection agency doesn't want the property, they are all about hard $.
Or wait until she dies and her estate goes to probate and to sell/transfer the house you need to have a clear title.(You have to have the judgement released to get the clear title). You do want to pay taxes & have insurance. Taxes are very important as the county assessor will sell a property that is delinquent with or without leins.
Now say mom passes in 5 years, house is still in her name and you are still living there. You can take just about forever to do probate and settle her estate which means clearing the lein and getting a clean title. So you could drag this out to forever. Now the probate judge may be one of those that require anyone making a claim to the estate to be present at the hearing. If their not there, then their claim is moot. So you could hope to have that happen. But that's not always the case.
Once it goes to probate you could then negotiate on the lein amount. Again,if the house is crappy and not worth much let them know that and negotiate down. This you can work hard because the collection agency doesn't want the property, they are all about hard $.
If the house isn't worth much - the collection agency or lein holder will know what it is based on the tax rolls -then you can say give me a figure. And work down from there. Real attorney's have to evaluate the whatever's of the probate hearing, prepare the lein release, etc.. The collection agencies don't want that as that costs them. They just want you to write them a check. Say the property is 100K on the tax rolls, but real estate agent says $ 88K based on comps. Then you should be able to negotiate to 10% - 20% of the value of the home to release the lien (whatever the amount is if there are no other real assets in probate), giving them somewhere between 8- 20K. Which can be a good deal to live somewhere for free for years. But you've got to ride it out if you take this approach.
Because of the default judgement, $$ is going to have to get paid. Whether it's paying an attorney now to clear this or paying off in probate.
If you lived in TX or FL, the CC companies can't put a lein on a homestead!