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Succinctly, with updates to follow: My 23-year-old sister is bipolar and has had problems with compulsive shopping in the past -- a couple hundred dollars of credit card debt that my mother paid off. She has also spent financial aid money on herself (i.e., on electronics rather than on school supplies), including tuition reimbursements to my parents. Last night, I learned that she has accumulated $11,000 of debt this year. She's still being cagey about what exactly she bought; she says some of the purchases she's gotten receipts for don't sound like her but might be anyway, and the very fact that she doesn't remember makes me inclined to think that few if any are fraudulent. In a conversation with our mother, she threatened to use our grandmother's social security number to take out a loan, which makes me wonder if she's already used other people's information in acquiring credit. My parents are about seventy and about eighty, respectively, and just last week my mother just lost her job as a teacher in a manner that drove her near suicide, her rationalization being that my father could then sue the school district and win enough for the family to live comfortably on. That being the case, I don't want them to have to shoulder this burden alone, but I've never dealt with a financial problem of quite this magnitude. Some obvious first steps: Ask her to cut up her credit cards; determine what she spent and where; return the items we can return and sell whatever we can't; get her in to see her psychiatrist, whom she hasn't been able to visit regularly due to the cost. What other information do we need and what other steps should we take?
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Mar 21, 2016 16:50
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:35 |
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Huntersoninski posted:If you think she's committing fraud, look into it. Check your credit report, your parents', any other relative whose SSN she somehow knows. You can check your complete reports for free once a year online, here. Thanks, I'll get right on that. The crazy thing is that she shouldn't know anyone's, but I can't afford to assume she was bluffing.
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Mar 21, 2016 16:59
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Cool. Is crossposting all right or do I need to appeal to a mod to move this thread?
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Mar 21, 2016 20:02
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Mirthless posted:How the gently caress did she get an $11,000 dollar line of credit? This is what none of us could figure out. Apparently it's multiple lines via PayPal, Amazon, etc. -- which would still seem to me to require some degree of falsification. Mirthless posted:(Oh god. Your parents are on all of her credit cards, aren't they?) We didn't even know she had more than one until yesterday!
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Mar 22, 2016 00:36
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Some good news: We've gotten the total down to about five thousand dollars. Updates to follow when I have time.Canine Blues Arooo posted:(don't co-sign anything ever) Funny thing -- this all came out because my parents refused to co-sign a loan.
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Mar 23, 2016 03:53
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:35 |
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Thank you to the mods for moving this thread! It's been a whirlwind month; we have returned enough that the total is now down from $13K (my sister underestimated) to about $4K. Other updates and answers to questions, including information about medication that I hope could be useful to other people with bipolar: My sister and I were each adopted from different parents at birth. Adoption is, I think, one of the roots of her lack of a sense of self-worth: Her mother didn't realize she was pregnant for months during which she continued to drink heavily, and, like some children whose sensitivity is heightened by alcohol and psychological factors, my sister has always had a deep awareness of the loss of her real family (her words) despite never having lived with them. That she has now met her biological parents and knows how poorly-equipped they would be to take care of her has only heightened her grief and anger. My mother is still working in part to provide for my sister. We do have some good news on the psychiatric front: Her doctor determined that her behavior was a rare side-effect of a drug called pramipexole. Looking at some of her purchases, which included insurance policies on musical instruments she didn't own, it's easy to believe that she made them while in an altered state of mind; she says she experienced physical pain when she tried not to order anything. These potential side-effects aren't even listed in the information to patients, which is alarming, but mostly I'm relieved that her doctor told us rather than attempting to conceal it to protect himself. The bad news is that my sister had problems with compulsive spending before this major episode and continues to after it: Assuming her grandmother would loan her the four thousand dollars, my sister spent her entire paycheck and didn't make the minimum payments on her credit. She has no savings for rent when she graduates and has lost her front-desk job. The question of whether she could live with family is seriously complicated by her hostility toward my parents. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my sister has neglected her schoolwork all semester, so my mother spent much of March and April helping her catch up; having spent six years on a BA because of routine breakdowns like this one, she really needs to graduate this may. After graduation, God only knows what's next. We're trying to find out if she qualifies for Social Security benefits and, in the meantime, welcome any advice.
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Apr 22, 2016 16:46
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