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Ever have a family member owe you money????
Warning: The below post is nothing more than a rant. A big fucking rant. Proceed at your own free will, but please be aware that this is not a test. It is indeed a rant.:soapbox:
So with that said....
Anyone ever loan a family member (eg: Sibling) money? Ever have that sibling NOT pay it back?
Here's the deal: Back in 1995- I loaned my sister $2,000- actually, I cosigned a loan with her so that she could get a computer system for college and a small refridgerator for her dorm. The computer was $1600.00 which included a printer, and the refridgerator was about 300 or so. We got an interest free loan for the first year. Payments were $89.00
So she made the payments. I assumed (assumed= ass out of U and ME) that this was paid off, granted its been now 10 years this July.
A week ago, I get in the mail a letter for a collection agency demanding $6800.00 from me for this purchase. I contact my sister. She tells me that she fell behind on the payments two years ago when she lost her job. I then learned that she charged a washer and a dryer to this account as well- it was a Future Shop account. She never paid the first purchase off within the first year so all the interest accumulated at 24.89% and then she charged a washer and a dryer as well. Her name was on the account so therefore she could. I thought the account was closed.
So now, I am being hounded to pay this debt. She can't. Her husband lost his job and she is keeping them afloat. I offered to do a settlement offer with the collection agency,and of course, they blew that off.:banghead:
Of course, I'm quite pissed off about this. I can't really afford this right now either. My sister won't return my calls now. I've tried calling her a few times since last week.:mad: She is pretty much avoiding me. Yes, I did pull my credit report, I did see this about two years ago, but the name was different and with the dealings with my ex, I disputed it thinking it was something entirely different- because it didn't have the original name of the place things were purchased at.
Anyone have a sibling like this?
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
Gods yes, Gynger. I know exactly what you're going through.
My older sister has pretty much fucked things up as well. I cosigned a loan for a car for her back in 2000. She was consistently late with her payments, eventually wrecked the car last Winter, and received a fraction of what was left on the car from her insurance.
I got a summons back in October from the finance company, apparently they were suing us both for nonpayment.
I immediately got on the phone to the attorney listed and let them know what was going on, and that this is a matter that needs to be brough up with her and her alone. They gave me a little bit of shit, but I did manage to get my name taken completely off it.
She also has student loans from the 90s that she has never paid a cent on. Last I heard she was bitching because they not only garnished her wages in her paycheck, but they were also taking her tax refunds until it was paid off. Oh well, I have absolutely no sympathy for her. She also put my mother's name on the student loans back then, so they were trying to take my mother to court for it. Yeah, that'd be good, taking a bedridden woman to court to pay off her daughter's debt. Luckily my mother got out of that and they've stopped hounding her.
She's borrowed countless hundreds of dollars from my little sister as well. She's never seen a cent of it back, and never will. She took advantage of her kindness, and would always give her some kind of sob story.
I haven't spoken to her in over a year. I don't intend to either. She's fucked too many people over, too many times. My patience ran out with her long ago. She can either sink or swim, and at this point, I don't care which it ends up being.
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
And I thought it was just me.
Luckily in my case, the amounts borrowed have always been under $1000, and for the most part I've gotten the money back. They also tried to get me to cosign a loan for them with some outift that I swore was a predatory lender about five years ago. After seeing the amount owed (before the whopping 27% interest) was three times what they told me, I ended up loaning them the money myself and had them pay it off in installments.
I've got another sibling who's about in the same boat, and I think the only reason that they're starting to come to me for money is that they've pretty much burned their bridges with everyone else, including my parents. I love 'em dearly, but its a crying shame that I can't trust members of my own family with that sort of thing.
And when you see the kind of lifestyle some people like this lead on their budget, you just know that they could recoup their debt easily (often within a year) if they'd learn to make sacrifices and live within their means.
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
Well actually yes, my sister needed to buy a house but had gone into bankruptcy 3 years earlier and could not get a loan. They were going to get a lawsuit settlement and that was supposed to immediately pay us back for $30,000.
It took 10 years and a lot of loving patience before they sold their house, but eventually we have been repaid.
There is no such thing as a loan to a family member . it is best to consider it a gift and then be pleased if you get a gift back...
Good luck ... its not like you need another straw on your back..
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
I've cosigned before, but not on an open account. It was a car loan for a relative. I made the relative give me an extra key and made it clear that I was going to be repo man if the payments fell behind and I've have to take up the slack. I'm a cold-hearted bastard, I guess. Happy end is that the payments were kept up.
I'm completely sympathetic with the thread here, but there's a lesson in it. Don't ever cosign unless you feel comfortable taking on the debt yourself and suffering the fallout from the borrower's failures. Period. That's what cosigning is.
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
I've never co-signed on anything for anybody. I just don't trust other people that much, I guess. I did lose about $5,000 from a roommate deciding that she wanted to keep living with me (she was co-leasee) without paying bills or rent. My stupid landlord would refuse to take her off the lease because he said, "It covers my own ass." But, I was the one making all of the rent payments to begin with...and if he'd taken her off the lease when I originally asked him to (about 7 months before my lease ended) I would have been able to get someone else in to take over roomie's part of the lease. It ended up going through lawyers and by the time anything got done, it was time to move. In the end, I lost my entire $3,000 security deposit along with the majority of the monthly rent I paid in her behalf since she decided that it was better to live for free.
I'm still angry about it, but I did learn a good lesson. Never, ever co-sign on a lease with anyone. Always get a place that can easily be afforded by the one person and sign the lease...and then make your own lease with the roomie...so it will be easy to evict them if need be.
Gynger, I am so sorry about your situation. However, I think the lesson here is to never sign on an open loan. And, never ignore something suspicious on your credit report. ;) Even if this was a "fraudulent" charge...the fact that it was left undisputed for 10 years would make you liable anyways. But, I am surprised that they refused a settlement offer. Of course, if this is not the original creditor (meaning that it was written off as P&L) you may be able to completely contest the loan...demanding that they show proof that you are a signer on that account. If they cannot produce the paperwork that shows your original signature...they have to (I'm almost positive) drop all collection activity against you. And, from now on...only do stuff with them in writing. ;)
Good luck...and let me know how it goes.
:hug:
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
Nothing so awful as all that, my mom doesn't have very good money management skills. I remember when I was 14 I had a job babysitting, the woman paid me in checks, so I'd deposit them in my mom's account and usually get the money from her once they cleared. Once a check for $100 bounced. So my mom flipped out on me over it, telling me she'd been depending on that money being in the bank. ??? Then when I got another check, for $240, she said she needed it to cover the last one - I never saw any of that. :P
When I started college, I said I'd like to be a fulltime student and I didn't want to work more than 20 hours a week, and could my parents help me out with money? My dad did, faithfully sending me enough for rent every month. My mom kept saying she forgot after month #3. [Partly the reason I started dancing, my savings were drained after one semester].
A couple of months ago my mom broke my bf's car window by accident. She promised to repay it - never did. $300 I never saw.
Nothing so awful, but after awhile I stopped trusting or believing her about money. :P
My grandfather, on my dad's side, just had his daughter steal his credit card from his home and run up $2500 on it. She's been really evasive and erratic, lost her job and house. Rest of the family is suspecting drugs, but nothing substantial. Guh.
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
I know that there is a lesson here, and quite honestly, I didn't know that the account was still open. And, it was 10 years ago for craps sake. I was on the phone most of yesterday afternoon trying to sort through this whole mess. I finally setttled with them for $1800.00 and just paid the damn thing. Then I phoned my sister and left her a message and told her that I paid it and it was done and that she needed to pay me back or I was taking her to court. My mom phoned me later and bitched me up one side and down the other for telling my sister that I was going to sue her. So then I asked why she was calling instead of my sister and my mom said, "Well, she just can't deal with you right now"... WTF-ever.
ANyways, I'm writing it off. I'm still pissed, more hurt that she won't return my phone calls, pissed that this has affected me and I didn't really need this on top of everything else (but things are looking up, I did get a job yesterday!).. but its the prinicpal of the matter at hand here.
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
You handled it very nicely, Gyn. Dunno what's up with your mom, but from every "my sibling is a dumbass" story I've heard, it has been accompanied with, "...and then my mom called me and chewed me out." Draw your own conclusions.
EDIT:
good job on the jobby-job :)
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
My sister didnt loan money from me BUT she did loan some from my grandparents.. actually over 7 grand.. this was supposidly for a car she got.. of corse 2 months later it got reposesed she lost her place and her car owed my grandparents 7k... And she has a 4 yr old girl with a baby on the way...
Some times i wanna fly upto canada and bitch slap my sister with an iron glove!>:(
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
My stepson owes my husband and I $300 that we let him borrow while he was down on his luck. Now he says he's going to Canada in two weeks for a pool tournament, which obviously costs money and we've only seen about $20 of it back. It has been almost a year since he borrowed the money. Needless to say, he's not getting any more from us until he gives us back the $300.
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
Yeah. I loaned my brother money a couple times. Never got it back and it was 10 years ago!
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
Who ever it was that said, "When you loan family money, consider it a gift" they were right.
My sister finally did call me last night, only to say, "Why is this MY problem?" I was completely mortified. So I said, "Look, you aren't the one with kids, a mortgage and car payments and everything else here... I didn't need this to be added to my shoulders, but I took care of it and the least you could do is try and pay me back a little at a time." Then I find out that she got her tax return and her and hubby are going on a cruise next month! So.. what the fuck is wrong with this picture?
Bitch slap with an iron glove? Oh hell no, its more like bitch slap with a mack truck! (I'm kidding of course!)
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gynger
Who ever it was that said, "When you loan family money, consider it a gift" they were right.
My sister finally did call me last night, only to say, "Why is this MY problem?" I was completely mortified. So I said, "Look, you aren't the one with kids, a mortgage and car payments and everything else here... I didn't need this to be added to my shoulders, but I took care of it and the least you could do is try and pay me back a little at a time." Then I find out that she got her tax return and her and hubby are going on a cruise next month! So.. what the fuck is wrong with this picture?
Bitch slap with an iron glove? Oh hell no, its more like bitch slap with a mack truck! (I'm kidding of course!)
If I am not mistaken, you can deduct the amount you paid on your sister's "behalf" off of next year's taxes under "theft/loss". It won't give you all of it back, but it'll give you a break. Make sure you hang on to all of the paperwork for it, just in case the IRS wants to see it.
You know...usually, I am not the type to say, "SUE HER!!", but in this case, I really think you should. She's chosen to act immature and irresponsibly...and even when she has the money to pay you back, she's outright choosing not to do so. I think you should take her to court and let it go on her record that she owes you money. :shrug:
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
Holy crap! That sucks ass Gynger! And she had the nerve to ask why it's HER fault??? Can we say self-absorbed over-entitled biatch? Um, it's HER problem because she bought the stuff, and because she didn't pay the bills. It's HER problem because she also bought MORE stuff later, without even your knowledge, racking up the bills. It would be my opinion that she simply decided she didn't have to pay because you'd co-signed and you'd take care of it for her to save your credit. She likely bought the additional appliances without intending to pay for those either.
Ouch. Lesson learned I guess. Never "loan" family money, and never co-sign for them either! :(
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
I'm sorry so many of you have had bad experiences with lending money to family members. It's hard to say no to your family. I haven't had problems with family members paying me back-the one time I lent a family member a considerable sum of money was when my sister needed $300 for the down payment on a car and she was very good about paying me back-but I have had problems with friends or ex-friends paying me back.
Three years ago when I was young and stupid, a friend (now an ex-friend) of mine asked if she could put her phone in my name because she was unable to get a phone in her name. I didn't know her that well, but I figured that she was a responsible person because she had her own apartment, a job, and her own car, so I said okay. She had a guy staying with her (I think he was her fuck buddy). He had no job and he accepted collect calls and made collect calls all day long. They ran up a $1400 phone bill within 2 months! I had the phone disconnected and I had her sign a piece of paper promising to pay me the money in full. She never did pay a cent and I had to take her to small claims court. She never showed up for her court date, but I was still unable to get the money because she had been fired from her job by then. It sucks because this fucked up my credit a little, and I had perfect credit before this happened. I learned my lesson-I will never lend anyone more than 20 bucks again, I don't care how good of a friend they are! I have another friend who is terrible at managing her money who I have lent a lot of money to over the years, but not anymore. She would pay me back sometimes, but I had to keep bugging her and bugging her about it. It was not fun.
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
I did cosign a car for my brother but that is the ONLY person I did or would ever do it for. I know how responsible he is and he had a good job, just not much credit history. What is funny is that at the time I didn't make squat and owed thousands of dollars but had great credit. I could NEVER have afforded the payments on the car. Well, fast forward 2 and a half years later and he hates his job and quits. In the meantime I've gone through a couple of events that have ruined my credit. The interest rate on the car is 4.9%. I'm a cosigner so my name is on the registration also with his. Well, I told him he can't give the car back to the finance company (he's very smart but doesn't understand money things that well) and that if he didn't want it I would take it. He told me if I could make the payments it was mine so I ended up with a car at 4.9% interest for the remainder of the loan that I never would have qualified for otherwise until my credit improves.
Now, I have loaned a lot of friends money but never really a realtive. I got tired of "loaning" my boyfriend money to pay his car payment or making the weekly childcare payments for him and finally just told him I wouldn't do it anymore after a few times. My boyfriend has borrowed $900 from his dad that he's never paid back. I even gave him $250 to send some to his dad to make an efffort and then he complains about not paying his dad about a month later. So I'm like what happened to the $250? The money borrowed from his dad sort of is something I felt responsible for since it was for the deposit on our rental house but I'm not giving him anymore money to just blow on shit like action figures and obscure movies and comic books.
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
I've had a similar situation occur with someone. But he wasn't even a family member, so it makes it even more angering, because I don't even need to have unconditional love for him or any of that crap since he is not family. When I was in college, a few friends and I were in an apartment and this loser "Psycho Miterko" didn't pay his share of the rent. At first it was because his paycheck got screwed up(OK I can believe that, because his coworkers who I was friends with DID tell me that it'd happened to them a few times before), but I think after a while he just got lazy and didn't want to pay so he used that as an excuse. He was extremely irresponsible. To avoid getting sued, I had to pay off the entire fucking rent balance on my own, even though I made a lot less money than him and I was a full-time college student, whereas he was a college flunk-out so he didn't have the expenses/time consumption of school. This was prior to my dancing days and I didn't make shit for income. Even working overtime hours didn't pay enough to cover his ass. I had to succomb to asking my mom for help, and not only did she use my college gift money to pay this off and then cancelled future gift money she'd promised me as a "punishment," but this also severely ruined our relationship and led to a big downhill spiral between us.
I was so angry, especially when I found out later that he'd had a crush on me and one of the reasons he wasn't paying his debt was because he was angry that I'd pursued his friend instead of him, and he wanted to spite me. He also started telling lies to excuse himself from paying, such as pretending to have cancer, which is angering because my mom eventually died from cancer and he is the very reason that I didn't get to have a good relatinoship with my mom in her final years. It is all his fault that my mom started disliking me. So what did I do in retaliation?...I took him to small claims court and sued his ass. By this time, I was no longer in a financial hardship situation(I was dancing by this time), so the money wasn't a necessity, but I just wanted to spite him and make him look stupid. Then I put the money I won from the lawsuit into the down payment for my brand-new Mustang. And then had a few of my friends, and his recent ex-girlfriend, taunt him about "how do you like being sued"? OK I know I'm an asshole, but he deserved it.
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
[Family Rant]
Sis#1: My big sister asked to borrow $300 from me once because she had to pay her mortgage. She said the payment was going automatically out of her checking account, and so was her car insurance, and she wasn't going to have enough to pay both. So I loaned it to her. Ummm this was about a month and a half ago. On top of that shi...like a week before she asked me for the money, her and hubby went down to Gatlinburg, TN and chilled in a cabin for dam near a week. Don't even ask me how much that shi was!!! I just felt like geez why didn't you budget your money better. I know how important it is to pay your mortgage on time, especially when you are just now getting your house.
It just pisses me off though. My sister has the worst hubby ever. They've dated since she was like 15, an she's going to be 30yrs old in like 2 months. He finally has a decent paying job, but he doesn't work NEARLY as many hours as my sisters. My sis works her 3 - 12hr shifts at the hospital, and picks up extra 8hr shifts when she can. My sister works 3rd shift at the hospital too. When she was in school trying to get her degree don't you know her hubby accused her of being with someone else because she was "to tired" for him all of a sudden!! BS. Ohhhhhhhhhh I cant' stand him
Sis#2 Ok, I made a post about my second sister before. In a nutshell, she is the laziest person I've ever met. After graduating highschool, she never felt the need to advance her education. Ok, cool college aint' for everyone so she said she wanted to be a cosmetologist (like my mom) She took her classes all through highschool, upon completion she didn't go to take the actual exam to get her license. Fast forward 3yrs she's living with me. My mom had just moved and I didn't want my parasite for a sister sponging off of my mom, she isn't exactly wealthy you know. So when my sis moved in with me she had nothing! Like, literally clothes that she'd worn when she was like 15. She was ridiculously thin, and had a serious weed problem. I got a Macy's charge and spent $400 on buying her clothes (thermals, coat, jeans etc) I tried getting her a job at Wendy's by my house. You know what she said, "oh I don't do restaurants" and her the f****ing nerve to turn her nose up. I knew it was downhill from there. The last straw was after she finally got a job. She'd had the job for about 3months, and from what I saw was'nt spending the money. I asked her for $200 to help with some of the bills (I was payin for EVERYTHING) and she went the heck off on me. She was like, "if I woudl've known you were going to try charging me, I could've lived with one of my friends" with that being said, I told her to get the fuck outta my house and live with her friends!
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
Never lend money.
GIVE money. Which means only give the money without an expectation to receive it. When you do expect it, it ends up consuming you too. If you can't afford to give it, dont. Don't put yourself out for someone elses mistakes, if this person cares about you, she wouldn't want you making her car payment with money for your car payment.
Don't be surprised. When you aren't put first on their list for paying back. And be prepared for that, because it is seldomly the money itself that ruins family/friends... it's when the expectation of repayment exceeds the bowerer's desire to pay it back.
Mast.
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
Its never worked for me I just wrote it off as a gift . I actually let my sis live in one of my places for a year rent free . It wasnt much of a place but it had everything you needed to be comfortable . She had the nerve to tell my wife one day in the post office that we don't do shit for her ( as far as helping her out ) . My wife actually went postal on her and kicked her ass in the post office the people were freaking out calling the cops etc. I actually didnt find out about this until months later how f-ing funny is that . My sis and I rarely have contact but that s kind of a mutual arrangement . Its too bad when family cant even get along but thats life !
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
I loaned my aunt a few grand some years back. I thought she'd pay me back but... I COULD use the money, but I'm not sweating it. She's family and I'm ok with her not being able to.
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Re: Ever have a family member owe you money????
SW ate my post again :( So I'll summarize what I tried to say the first time...
I personally haven't lent anyone the kind of money Gynger talked about in the OP, but my brother did. Our sister & her GF had gotten laid off in 2002 and my brother lent them a couple grand to help pay the rent on their house (which they shared with my sister's son and the GF's three kids). A little later, my brother found out that the GF (whose name was on the lease) used the money to pay off her own online gambling debts instead of on the rent. Needless to say, my brother was pissed. Then my sister passed away, and the GF left town shortly after the funeral. (Fortunately, they lived close to my parents, so they became my nephew's legal guardians, with not a peep from the GF.) And yeah, my brother never saw the money again.
My other sister has been through a lot of troubles too, and she's battled her way through pretty well. It used to be that when she asked to "borrow" money, I would expect to be paid back eventually, and would get angry when weeks and months passed, and instead of getting paid back she would ask me to lend her more (I'm talking small amounts, $20-50 here and there...I stopped keeping track after a while). As Sitri and Mast said earlier in the thread, never "lend" to a family member, "give" to a family member, and if you get paid back it's like a gift in return...so that's how I treat it.
Back in the present, my brother has proposed a plan where we would buy a house back in the Bay Area when I decide to move back. Problem is, the earliest I can afford it is a year from now, and since he doesn't have enough money for the down payment he suggested that I front it and he would pay the lion's share of the mortgage. It's a workable plan...I'm just naturally skeptical of the whole money/family thing, as I'm sure most are.