<prompt> Human: My mother in law is heavily in debt, 50k that I know of, maybe more. She has ZE-RO income, is homeless, and has no earning power, as in she has no professional skills aside from hourly jobs. She has no money, and at this time she has no retirement. She is 60 years old, so starting over is sort of out of the picture, and her job history is so splintered I dont believe it would matter anyways. Im essentially funding her ability to not live in a homeless shelter via extended stay hotels, as she and my wife have a quite toxic relationshipshe kinda sucks.My question is, wtf are her options? I mean, she basically has no plans, or no way of paying any of this debt off, but wants to try and get right with all of it. Shes already got a bankruptcy on her history that is less than 5 years old, so we dont believe she can go that route. Is there any legal recourse for a situation where a person just simply isnt going to be able to repay their debt? I have a good job, so Im simply going to buy a house and rent it to herwhich I wont get any money from her, yay!, more so that we have peace of mind that she isnt stuck living in homeless shelters. She can live off of us, and thats not a huge issue, but given her age and earning power she will never be able to scratch the surface of getting back on track. Anyone else dealt with something like this? I just need to nuke her whole financial life from orbit, if it all possible. Sorry if this might fall in the legal-advice area, I feel like it may be a fuzzy area.  <response>: It depends also what kind of debt she has. If some of that debt is to the government taxes, child support, federal student loans then she should probably speak to a lawyer. Some of these debts cannot be discharged by bankruptcy, and a couple might not even have statutes of limitations. If her debt is all credit cards, loans, and simple collections, then the cheapest way out is to wait until statutes of limitations run out for each debt. After that, she cannot be forced to pay, nor will it show on her credit report. Statutes of limitations tends to be 7 years from default date in most states. She cannot be garnished if she has no income, but if theres a consigner then they would be forced to pay on her behalf. The second alternative is chapter 7 bankruptcy. Assuming that her previous bankruptcy is also a chapter 7, she would have to wait 8 years from discharge before she can apply for chapter 7 again. This option will require paying for the bankruptcy process. My question is, how did she get into so much debt in such a short amount of time? If she has no income, how did this happen? Is this mostly medical debt, or is she lying in order to get loans? If the latter, please protect yourself and make sure she does not get access to your personal info and use it to go on a shopping spree. 