I have an excellent credit rating with my own credit cards. I am an authorized user on one of my mother’s cards. She is becoming careless about paying hers on time. She refuses to let us, her children, handle her finances. She is extremely stubborn and will never change. Should I have my name removed from her card to protect myself?
As long as you are only an "authorized user", not a "joint account holder", you are not legally responsible for her account. That said, whatever she does will show up on your credit, because her account "mirrors" on your credit, so I’d get yourself off the account as soon as you can. If you know she has made late payments in the past, I’d get a copy of all your credit reports from www.AnnualCreditReport.com (you can get this once a year for free) and dispute any late payments from that account that are showing up on your report immediately. You can do this at the same time you get copies of your report, right there, on-line, with each credit bureau.
I feel for you in your situation. I had a similar situation with my dad a few years back, and his pride wouldn’t let me help him either. It wasn’t until he had a fall and ended up in the hospital that I could take over his finances because I had medical power of attorney and he had a trust where I was successor trustee.
Hopefully your mom has a trust and power of attorneys set up so you can take over to help her as soon as you can. If not, now would be a great time to talk her into setting one up. This will save you enormous time and heartache in the future. I wish you the best of luck and my heart goes out to you!