How to handle identity theft, credit card fraud, forged checks by a spouse
Posted on : 11-13-2009 | By : Legal Information | In : Bankruptcy & Debt, Chapter 7, Credit Card Debt, Credit Card Fraud, Criminal Law
Tags: identity theft
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My friend has the following issues. What steps should he take and in what order?My friend needs some legal guidance. Here are the facts. He has been married for about 25 years to an excessive spender who is probably bipolar and/or has borderline personality disorder. She is mentally ill and has refused to seek treatment. She has run up $100s of thousands of dollars of debt by getting credit cards in her name and by committing fraud by taking out cards in both of her daughters’ names (both are over 18) and in my friend’s name. He was unaware of this behavior for years because the bills, which went unpaid, were sent to the wife’s business. She has declared bankruptcy twice, once in 2000 and again in 2009. This wipes debt in her name clean but doesn’t remove the debt in her daughters’ or my friend’s name. He is carrying a $400K mortgage on the house that was taken out to cover the debt (the house was paid for) and the wife’s car payment because she can’t get any credit. He is driving a car with almost 200K miles on it that is on its last legs and he can’t get a loan to buy another one and certainly doesn’t have enough cash to buy one outright. He lost his security clearance at work in August because of the debt that his wife has run up. His job is in jeopardy at this point because most jobs at Northrop Grumman require at least a secret clearance. If he loses his job he will lose the house because the wife’s salary won’t cover the loans. He has wanted to divorce her for years and has to divorce her to get away from the debt and get his clearance back. He has evidence of her identity theft/fraud that is copies of checks she forged on his grandmother’s bank account. He can also prove which cards he did not take out and his daughters did not take out. He hasn’t prosecuted her for that and the multiple credit cards she took out in his and the daughters’ names because he figures she will lose her job and he will lose the house because he needs both incomes to pay the loans. He needs to prosecute to get her debt cleared from his name and to get his clearance back. Questions are: 1) How does he protect himself from further identify theft (stop her from continuing to take cards out in his name)? 2) What are the steps he needs to take to prosecute her? 3) What kind of protection/grace can he get from the bank regarding inability to make full payment on the mortgage if/when she loses her job because of the prosecution? If he can’t make the payment on her car the bank will repossess the car but that will be her problem, not his. He has to remove his debt obligation that she created before he can divorce her because he can’t cover the loan on just his salary. He has to get divorced in order to keep his job. This has reached a critical point.
