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A young woman believes that her parents set her up to experience financial challenges by leaning on her for financial support when she was just a child. According to the woman, her parents began making purchases with credit cards in her name when she was just 12 years old and continued to do so for years. After her mom “put the home internet in [her] name to build credit,” credit accounts in the woman’s name were used for various other expenses: “Cable in 2014, a furniture store card in 2016, a cell family plan when I was 18.”
Although some people had doubts about the woman’s story, others accused the parents of financially abusing their child.
The woman said she was denied when she applied for her first credit card on her own.
She was in college at the time. When she was allegedly told that her “utilization was 89 percent,” she didn’t really know what that meant, she shared in a post on Reddit that has since been deleted. Years later, her parents asked her to co-sign a refinance for their home. Looking through her credit reports, she noticed several of the accounts were not ones that she opened. “Two paid, three active, two in collections,” she noted.
She blamed her parents and confronted them.
She said she offered her parents “two options” when confronting them about the “misuse” of her credit. “Option A, they contact every creditor to remove me or pay the balances and then write letters of explanation,” she explained in her post. “Option B, I file police reports and fraud affidavits and the bureaus will block the info.”
According to the young woman, her parents’ mistakes and late payments have had a significant impact on her finances. But her dad brushed off her concerns and still wanted her to co-sign, saying that she “owed them because they fed me for 18 years.”
He said she should ‘repay’ them for everything they bought her when she was a kid.
Based on her Reddit post, it sounds like her dad would not let up. “He said if I will not co-sign I should at least ‘repay the family debt’ of about 12k that they estimate they spent on my band fees, braces, rides, etc.,” she wrote. Shocked that her dad would accuse her of owing them money for expenses from her childhood, the woman decided to figure out how much her parents owed her.
This meant looking at how her poor credit affected her financially. “I listed every negative line and what it cost me,” she said. “Higher car interest, denied renter promo, deposits I had to put down, the time on hold with bureaus, even two PTO days I burned to sit at the DMV to freeze my credit.” She estimated that her parents owed her about $9,780 for the damage they caused.
In response, some people accused her parents of taking advantage of her.
Many couldn’t believe that her parents would even suggest that she owed them something. “I’m sorry kids do not [have] to pay their parents back for their childhood,” one person commented on the post. “As a parent that’s literally ur duty I would hope people having kids would know that.”
Others accused the parents of gaslighting and told the woman to cut contact.
“They are your parents, and you are their child,” one person wrote. “You did not ask to be born, therefore, every single thing they did for you as a parent is what they should have done. They don’t get a gold star for simply being parents and paying for a few band lessons or braces. That’s disgusting.”
But several people had doubts about this story.
“If your credit is so destroyed why would the bank care if you co-signed?” one person who was skeptical of the story questioned. Another person wondered, “How in the heck can a 12 year old take out a credit agreement?????”
Typically, those who are under the age of 18 can’t apply for credit cards in the US, but parents can add a child as an authorized user, which would still affect the child’s credit.
