My mom charged $11,000 to my credit card

HLN Money Expert Clark Howard.

Help Me Clark!
From HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard

JAMES:
Two years ago, my mom charged about $11,000 dollars to my credit card and now they're coming after me. I am 22 and just graduated from college, and many employers look at my credit as a negative towards hiring me. The debt collectors call me and I have tried offering a settlement and they will not accept it even after I have explained the situation to them. What should I do? I cannot afford to pay them anything.

CLARK:
Well what a sad thing that your mom betrayed your trust and charged to your credit card. I get this question a lot where a family member or a friend abuses your credit card and you're left holding the bag.

Normally you would have to fill out an affidavit where you swear that you did not make the charges and you say that they were made by your mom and if you do that at the time that the charges have taken place or the time you knew the charges had taken place you normally are not liable for those charges.

You've let this go on and it doesn't sound at all like you want to put your mom in to legal jeopardy so it's going to be up to you to try to make a deal. You have two issues. One is the affect on your credit which for seven years the unpaid debt harms you on your credit report. If you reach a deal and the debt no longer exists on your report the harm to you lessens enormously and with time essentially disappears so the most important thing is to try to cut a deal. And the key number for you is you're two years out from this, once you hit statute of limitations in your state, which means the amount of time that somebody could sue you against a debt you have far more negotiating power to negotiate a settlement for a much smaller amount than the 11,000.

Likely once you go outside of statute of limitations you should be able to settle the debt for 1,000 or so dollars.

If you go and do a Google or Bing search and put in your state and put statute of limitations on debt as the search, you'll see. And that varies by state from either 3 or 4 years on a credit card debt. Some states it will be longer than that.