<prompt> Human: My girlfriend, lets call her Mary, and her brother currently live with their parents. The parents are in their 60s, dont speak English well, father doesnt work because of mental issues, the mother and Mary are the sole moneymakers 70,000 combined household income I believe?and are having financial problems. Mary is the one who does all the financials, cell phone payments, health insurance, etc. for the whole family because of language barriers, while the brother has no job, doesnt help pay or help with anything for the family and now they just discovered he has a credit card and is in debt 6000 and has unpaid student loans. Not sure why but he may be lazy or very depressed. Is there anything that can be done to prevent the brothers financial mistakes having an impact on the family or Mary? My girlfriend usually struggles to help pay for everything else as it is and I dont want to see her having to deal with her brothers own finances. I know almost nothing of personal finance but my girlfriend is really stressing out and I just want to see if anybody had experience with something like this.  <response>: If the brothers stuff is in his name only as in, he had no consigner for the loans or the credit card, its his problem. If hes an adult and you have to be to legally sign documents for loans, he is responsible for paying it off or not, and the consequences of those actions.If someone cosigned with him, then that person is equally responsible for the debt and it would be up to them to take care of business including but not limited to shredding the card ASAP. 