Bank Levy Placed Against My Mom and is Now Broke

[Help4momplease]

My question involves collection proceedings in the State of: New York.
My mom is receiving SSI and had it directly deposited to a joint account with me. Yesterday and again today there were bank levies placed on the account, by two different "law firms" which are really collection agencies. One firm placed one yesterday and another firm placed one today, on both Savings and Checking. My mom was never served papers or notified that these judgements were being placed on her account. We only found out when I called the bank to check the balance to pay the rent yesterday and when I went to the bank today to find out what was going on. We have no knowledge of where the judgements are or who the debts are too. It also doesn't help that my mom is sick and unable to work, SSI being her only form of support. She also gets confused and forgets things a lot, so I don't really know everything going on and I am really just trying to find a place to start from. If anyone can offer any advice on how to go about gleaning this information it would be greatly appreciated. So far, I have spoken to one of the firms where they could not give me any information because my mom was not there and who was really interested in getting my SSN or hers, which I refused to give. Please advise on how I can go about getting this money back for her or stopping this raping of her account, as I am unable to support her, my child and myself. Thanks!

[aardvarc]

Go online to http://www.annualcreditreport.com. Mom will be able to pull her reports from all 3 bureaus. Consumers get to do this once per year per bureau for free.

Accounts that are in trouble are usually listed first, and that can help her to narrow down which of those accounts have levied against her. The creditor info will be listed with at least an address, and often a phone number. Start there.

If you want to talk to someone at the law firm/collection agency, mom is going to have to call and cough up her SSN to verify that it's her. Typically, they'll only talk to HER, not you, since the debt is in her name (No, it doesn't matter that they have seized an account with your name on it - they can only speak to her about it, Once she speaks with them once, she can probably give permission for them to discuss things with you too - but it's going to have to start with a call from mom.)

In the meantime, open a new account of your own and start getting all of your funds pointed to that account because anything that goes into the other account (anything with both names) is going to be kissed goodbye for a while until either the levy is satisfied or until any mistake is cleared up.

[Help4momplease]

Go online to http://www.annualcreditreport.com. Mom will be able to pull her reports from all 3 bureaus. Consumers get to do this once per year per bureau for free.

Accounts that are in trouble are usually listed first, and that can help her to narrow down which of those accounts have levied against her. The creditor info will be listed with at least an address, and often a phone number. Start there.

If you want to talk to someone at the law firm/collection agency, mom is going to have to call and cough up her SSN to verify that it's her. Typically, they'll only talk to HER, not you, since the debt is in her name (No, it doesn't matter that they have seized an account with your name on it - they can only speak to her about it, Once she speaks with them once, she can probably give permission for them to discuss things with you too - but it's going to have to start with a call from mom.)

In the meantime, open a new account of your own and start getting all of your funds pointed to that account because anything that goes into the other account (anything with both names) is going to be kissed goodbye for a while until either the levy is satisfied or until any mistake is cleared up.

Thanks for replying to my post, I followed your link and got copies of her credit report. They also listed the court the judgement was in. Thanks so much for your help!

[aardvarc]

Excellent! Glad you have found a starting point for getting this worked out!