At our firm, Hoyes, Michalos & Associates Inc., we believe in meeting with a trustee or professional staff person to discuss your options with respect to your debts. Many people will call us at 310-PLAN to discuss their particular situation and usually this results in a free consultation with one of our trustees. When we make the appointment we often ask people to bring with them a list of the people they owe money to so we can review the type and amount of debt.
At one of my meetings in my Brampton office, a young person provided me with a list of the people he owed money to and it totaled approximately $28,000. Most of the debt was credit card debt which totaled about $21,000. We started to talk about the credit card debt, discussing how much the debt was on each card, what he had spent it on and why. He told me that he and his girlfriend used one of the credit cards to purchase household things.
I asked him for more details on this particular credit card. He told me that he had the card for years and it was one of his first credit cards. When he and his girlfriend moved in together and the credit card company offered him an extra card, it made sense for her to have a card for the household things they paid for together. He showed me a statement and it only had his name on the bill.
I started to explain about extra credit cards or supplementary credit cards and he was adamant that he was the only person on the card and therefore the only one responsible for the debt, not his girlfriend.
Our discussion continued and I told him that these extra or supplementary cards have agreements, and depending on the agreement his girlfriend may be responsible for the debt just like him. Every agreement is different and I told him that he would have to check to see what this particular agreement said, in order to determine if his girlfriend was also responsible for the debt. Some agreements you need to use the card to be responsible for the debt, and others you just need to activate the supplementary card to be responsible for the debt. It varies from agreement to agreement.
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