My son andI talked and agreed that it would be a good idea for him to accept a couple of the pre approved credit card offers he had received in the mail to start building him some credit. The deal was I would keep the cards use them for things we needed and I would make the payments since I had much more money coming in at the time. Everything was going great I was even able to pay off the entire monthly balance sometimes but always payed almost half of the balance. I quickly built his credit score up to almost 700 in one year. Well my luck took a turn for the worse I lost 1,600 of my monthly income within 6 months since over half my income was coming SS survivors benifits from when thier Father passed away. I still had one check coming in plus my income from my job which was not much. I now had to start making the minimum payments on the cards after maxing them out due to lost income and no health insurance. I spoke with my son and we agreed it would be best to take a low interest loan from our bank to pay the cards off because just making the minimum payment the balance would never come down so he did and the cards were paid off. I still had the cards in my possesion which was suppose to have been cut up unfortunately I did not do that right away. Well more bad luck came my way I developed some very serious health problems which interfered with my work and I started missing work which led to eventually not being able to work at all and now I am in the process of appealing a disability claim. I started to use the cards again for things we needed to get by and this was without the permission of my son because I assumed I could keep up the minimum payments. Well all it took was one missed payment on the cards and things just spiraled out of control with all the charges which resulted in me not being able to make the payments at all. I was keeping this to myself desperately trying to find a way to work this out. I eventualy found out that credit card companys will not negotiate until the account is 90 days past due which I am in the process of doing now. My son just recently found out about it and went through the roof which he had every right to I assured him I am doing everything in my power to negotiate a settlement payment. I made an offer in writing to the companys which we are still waiting to hear from. One thing about my son he has a very bad temper and can get violent he is 20 yrs old and he got the cards over two years ago. He starts arguments about the matter and sometimes threatens to sue me for credit card fraud…can he?. when ever I used the cards I always signed my name never his, I am in no way justifying my actions but can he sue me for fraud?.
"without the permission of my son" = Fraud
There’s no way around that.
If you had rights then how is he gonna sue you. Its really on him to tell you the truth. You need to pay them off and he needs to close them out. He can sue but I don’t think it will get very far. The only thing I think he can do is take you to small claims court for the balance owed.
Credit card fraud is VERY hard to prove anyway. Its allot of he said she said specially if you no each other. I went thru this with my ex. He filed a report with me even thow he gave me permisssion to use the card and I had my own card as well. I made all the payments on it. But later he just got all weird and wanted me off all them. I think its cause we broke up and got a new girlfriend very fast and she was a you no what. So yep he tried to file a police a report but even the cop told good luck and the best thing for him to do was take me to small claims court but I paid off the cards before that happened. He was so mad.
Settlling the accounts isn’t going to fix this.
For example, credit card A has balance of $5000. The bank settles for $3000. The put the fact that the account was settled for less than the full amount on your son’s credit history AND the send a 1099-C for $2000 (which is then taxable income to him).
Can he sue you for fraud? Probably. He certainly never gave you permission to ruin his credit. And if he doesn’t live with you, you can be certain he’ll argue that he never signed up for the account or authorized you to do so.
Even if the original agreement was that you would occasionally charge items and pay the bill in full, you stopped doing that. You said that at some point you agreed to cut up the cards and then didn’t.
Since your son permitted you to use the credit, there is no fraud. Since the acount is or was over 30 days late , his credit has been damaged . If you’re receiving disability now, perhaps you can get a loan to pay off the account balance and try to make peace with him.I am willing to bet he is a red head because we have a son who is 33 but we tried to help him and we just found out all the money we gave him was used for gambling