Helping elderly parent settle credit card

[FrankF]

Good morning,

 

 

I hope to get some guidance on my options as I attempt to help my 78 yr old mother resolve a Mastercard debt. She is living on social security and has no other source of income. She has a balance of $17K on her mastercard. The payments are simply more than she can handle. For that matter, the minimums, as everyone knows, are doing nothing to reduce her balance anyway. I'm at a point where I see very few options. I would like to approach mastercard with a settlement offer, but I'm not certain how to proceed or whether they'll have any interest in the offer to begin with. If I could pull together 50% of the total balance, what are the chances that the card company might consider accepting this as a payoff. The only other optioin I see is for her to seek bankruptcy protection. Obviously, I'd rather not go that route if it's avoidable. I'd would really appreciate any advice or feedback on this dilemma. Thank you.

 

 

Regards,

 

Frank

[Kayjc]

Another possibility is for her to just stop paying. My understanding is that they cannot garnish social security benefits. If you go this route you may want to get her an answering machine to screen calls, since they will start calling if she stops paying. Also if she has a bank account with the bank that issued the card, she probably needs to change banks. Banks often have cross-collaterilization clauses that would allow the bank to take money from her account if she stops paying on the card.

[breeze]

Any updates on this?