i"m back-question about co-signer

[albacore44]

me again. i know i should know the answers to some of these questions, but please comment because this is not for me.

my 83 year old mother-in-law lives with me on my property in a house in the back. A couple years ago she co-signed for a credit card account with a motorcycle shop for my nephew. he bought a motorcycle and a quad and ran the card up to $12k. well now he is defaulting, and plans to file BK in the future. she is getting harrassing calls and is terrified.

we had a long talk about the worse that can happen, since i know all about it, and how it will go down as the months pass. i was able to calm her down.

Ok, so i'm wondering what they can do to her at her age ??. I know he will get off scott free with a discharge, but i'm sure they will persue her for the deficiency after they Repo the bikes.

She receives a small pension and SS of about $1500 a month. she also has a couple of annuities worth about $100K. she doesnt care about her credit score this late in life . it's a crappy situation, i'm more concerned about protecting her assets and income. thanks for any advice

[HHM]

You need to do some exemption research. Obviously the SSI is exempt, but you need to see if the Annuities are exempt (do not assume that they are, for annuities to be exempt, they must meet certain criteria). If yes, then no real problems, she will have to deal with collections. If not exempt, then she has a potential problem.

[GoingDown]

Make sure she doesn't talk to them on the phone, so she doesn't tell them about the annuities.

There is a decent chance that they will never figure out that she has annuities unless they appear somehow on her credit report.

In the exceedingly rare possibility of debtor's exam, she could claim that she doesn't know what's going on at her age, etc.

My grandmother was in a similar situation with co-signing for a relative who defaulted on a car loan. She had some investments, but the creditors never figured it out. They don't know as much as people think they do.