<prompt> Human: Me and my wife recently took her 12 year old second cousin into our home. Hes been bounced around between living with his unmarried and separated parents, both of whom are drugs addicts and unableuninterested in raising him, and living with his grandma, with whom hes lived for the past 3 years when she discovered that he was regularly missing about 40-50 days of school every year while he lived with his mom. This summer, his grandma told us she couldnt handle him anymore now that hes fallen in with a bad crowd, so we offered to have him live with us for the school year and possibly beyond, since we have a spare bedroom and live in a good school district. We got the mom to sign a form showing that hes living with us and which allows us to make decisions on his behalf in relation to school issues and decisions, but we dont have any legal custody or anything like that. Hes been living with us since mid-August.We were talking with the grandma today and she confided that she suspects that her daughter the kids mom has used the kids social security number to open up credit card accounts in his name and probably is ruining his credit.Is there anything we, as his caretakers, can do about this? Can we arrange to have his credit report frozen to prevent any accounts being opened in his name? Do we need to have full, legal, custody to be able to do anything if we find that parents have in fact opened accounts in his name? what can we do to try to start to rehabilitate his credit?This kid has had a rough life and if theres anything we can do to stop his mom from making it worse, we want do to it. Were in Seattle, Washington. Kids mom currently lives in Skokomish but is being evicted next month and we have no idea where shell live next. The kids dad my wifes first cousin is in a drug rehab facility in Colorado, has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and is completely out of the picture.tl;dr: We took a 12yo boy into our home, we think Mom is ruining the kids credit, and we need to know ifhow to stop this and begin repairing his credit.  <response>: Since youve stated that you are not his legal guardians, you may not be able to freeze his credit reports. I think if I were you, I would still try, though. Its possible that they wont ask for supporting documents showing guardianship. If, worst case scenario, they dont let you freeze it now and presumably dispute any fraudulent accounts, that doesnt mean his credit is ruined forever. It just means that when hes older, hell have to file a police report for identity theft and dispute the accounts at that time. Given his age, it wont be too difficult to prove. 