<prompt> Human: Dear personalfinance,My girlfriends mother has opened and basically maxed out 8 credit cards under my girlfriends name. These credit cards add up to around 5,125 according to a credit report. The mother has recently retired and will be receiving around 20,000-25,000 within the next week. My girlfriend just turned 21 last month and has had her mother basically controlling all of her finances her whole life. When I first heard that my girlfriend knew of some debt on one of the three cards in her wallet, I had to investigate. To both of our surprise it was a lot higher than anticipated. If we manage to convince the mother to pay off all of the cards, will my girlfriends credit be destroyed? What are our options? Her father lives overseas as he works with the government. She lives with her mother and cant afford her own place.The credit reportAssistant: If your gf really had nothing to do with it she should file an identity theft report with the police. call the bureaus and explain the situation and ask what they need her to do to have those lines of credit removed from her name. Mom will get in big trouble going that path and will likely face jail timeHuman: Is there any way to clear her credit score problems up without her mother getting into big trouble?Assistant: Usually not. the credit bureaus are very particular about what is removed. They wont take something off because you ask. They usually require documentation proving its fraud like a police report and a letter from the banks themselves. I dont know how you could prove fraud without implicating mom. You could lie and say you dont know who opened them but that is also a felony and you could fave jail time yourselves if it comes out that your girlfriend had knowledge that her mom was the one doing especially since the girlfriend was probably the benefactor of some of the spending dinners, clothing, housing, etc. I think your options are eat this as a loss and wait for the charge off to fall off in 6-7 years or risk getting mom charged with fraud clearing this up. its a sucky situation :lHuman: its a sucky situation :lBut its important to keep in mind that this is a sucky situation which a trusted adult knowingly put her into. It wasnt an accident or some big mistake. The mother needs to understand this and know that its her responsibility. Assistant: I agree but if the girlfriend is dependent what do you do? Send mom to jail to remove a charge off? Human: My girlfriend is currently out of state and will be back in a few days. When she returns, we plan on convincing her mother to pay everything off. Then well completely separate her finances from her mother.  <response>: Consider calling the 3 bureaus, transunion, equifax, and experian, and requesting a freeze or fraud alert be placed in the file. That way if mom tries to open a new line of credit you can stop it before it happens 