WWYD: My Mother Opened a Credit Card in My Name

Late last year I paid off all of my debt. DEBT-FREE! And I just sent in my last car payment. I am pretty happy with where I am financially and I’m building my emergency fund. However, I went to open up a credit card to get a new computer (and then just close it) since mine just died and I have my fluid funds tied up. I got declined. I have a pretty good credit score so I was surprised I was declined. I called Barclays and the representative told me that I have a $6,000 balance on a credit card, and then I discovered my mother opened this credit card without my knowledge. She’s making the minimum payment with a bit more, but she missed some payments last year which doesn’t look good on my report. I don’t know how to approach this. I already asked her and she acted surprised/didn’t care. What would you do? — M.

I have a friend whose sister opened up a credit card in her name and racked up about $10,000 on the card. My friend had two choices: personally deal with that debt, or go to law enforcement and file a police report citing identity theft so she could prove to the credit card company that she was a victim of fraud. She didn’t want to file charges against her sister, so she paid the debt and then signed up for credit monitoring.

I’m not sure what I’d do in this position. I can’t imagine my mother stealing my identity and if she did and I confronted her about it, I’d imagine she would be remorseful and have a good explanation about why she did it. I wouldn’t be able to turn my mother into the police.

I’d imagine it’d be a lot different if she acted like she didn’t care about the theft. I’m not going to assume anything about the relationship you have with your mom, but if my mother acted like she didn’t care about stealing my identity and ruining my credit, we would not be on very good terms. I would work out a deal with her to get that debt paid off sooner or later, and if she resisted, I’d file a police report. The idea that my mother would have to deal with the police and face possible jail time would probably scare her into working something out — the scenario for me probably being that I would help her get the card paid off, and then we’d work out whatever issues she has that got her to open the card in my name in the first place. Like my friend, I’d probably sign up for credit monitoring — just in case.

I’m sorry that this happened. I hope you can work it out with your mother. Since she’s making payments, it seems like she would be open to getting this fixed. And if you can’t work it out, it’s okay to file a police report. You don’t have to pay for someone else’s mistakes.

UPDATE FROM AUTHOR WHO WROTE IN:

Thanks for the advice. It really helped me. Just wanted to do a follow-up to this nightmare of a story and let you know how it turned out. After talking to my mom yesterday and being very angry, she said she was embarrassed about the whole thing, which is why she acted surprised, and she was planning to pay it soon. She apologized for not telling me and she actually received some money so she paid it off as of today. Apparently she didn’t want to tell me she was in temporary trouble financially. She used the card to finish paying off her house closing costs when she sold it earlier this year. Now she lives in a smaller place — empty nest and all — and she has a better job, so she’s doing okay. She just didn’t want to tell me. So it’s a happy ending of sorts. I’m waiting for my credit to update and I’m putting the alerts on. I’m glad I talked to her and didn’t file a police report. I feel like that was never really an option. — M.

Email me your WWYD experiences to me with “WWYD” in the subject line. See previous installments.

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.