<prompt> Human: As the title says, my father-in-law took out a credit card in my wifes name using her social security number without her knowing. She just ran a credit report and found out the debt has been sent to collections. Is there anything we can do to remove this from her score? He says he cant pay, but its a small amount only 1300. My wife suggested we just pay for it so we can get her credit score back up, but Id rather not pay for debt we technically didnt have in the first place.Assistant: Paying a collection to 0 has no effect on FICO score 8. Zero effect. Her score is harmed for the full 7 years.The best option is to file a fraud report and send it to the companies to remove the account as not hers, but they will require a police report and her father could get in trouble.But...if he did it once, he may do it again. And her credit is ruined for 7 years -- insurance rates could go up, she might get penalized with higher interest rate car loans, etc.Human: he may do it againYour FIL committed a felony, this isnt just a dick move. File a police reportAssistant: Easy to say, harder to do. Human: My thoughts exactly. Its easy for me to know what we need to do, but so much harder to even talk to my wife. FFS, this is her dad. How do you do that to family?  <response>: Right. That said he stole from her. 