Mom is no longer able to drive but has 2 yrs. left on her car loan. What are the ramifications to voluntary repossession?
Mom is 75. Beginning of memory loss/dementia. Her husband of 25 years recently passed after a brief illness and didn’t have any life insurance. She has no savings.
Her car payment and insurance are about $650/mo. She owes about $8,500 on the loan. Her $2,100 SS does not leave her any money after rent, utilities, car/ins payments, cell phone. I pay for her groceries and I’m just making ends meet for my immediate family. She won’t drive more than 1 mile to the post office and the grocery store because she’s afraid of getting lost.
She has decided to stop driving.
My question is if she voluntarily has the car repossessed it will affect her credit. At this stage in her life, would there be any reason she would need “good credit” to get into an assisted living/memory care facility? She has no assets at all. She is not going to try for any future loans or credit cards. Reality is that it’s all down hill from here with the memory issues.
Is there any possible reason that ruining her credit with a voluntary repossession would hurt her in the future she has left?
42 Answers
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I took my moms car, put a for sale sign in the window and parked it in the back of a Sam's club parking lot near the Sam's gas station. Do you have any idea how much traffic goes in and out of a Sam's club gas station? You can't buy that kind of advertising! It sold within a week.
Look up the blue book value of the car. Get a for sale sign at the dollar store. Write some details on the sign....mileage, year, make and model, price and your phone number. I think you'll be surprised how quickly you can move it.
There are also car places that buy used cars. You go onto their website, type in the details of the car and it will tell you what they are willing to pay.
Lots of options...but the last thing I would do is let it go back to the bank.
Good Luck!
I just looked this up on-line. Verbatim, for Washington state, I found: "Even if you return the car voluntarily, you still are responsible for paying any outstanding debt on the loan, as well as the lender's cost of the repo, and your creditor still may enter the late payments or repossession on your credit report."
I would find someone to buy it for at least what is owed. Check around. You might find a local lot that will sell it for her on consignment.
Why would she need her credit rating? Because credit rating is used as an objective measure to assess financial trustworthiness.
For instance, at the age of 95, my Mom got a Costco credit card so that she could charge her glasses and prescriptions to the credit card instead of paying with cash. She doesn't have any other VISA credit card. The real reason she got a Costco credit card was so that she could have the one extra year of technical support on her TV, therefore giving her 4 years of warranty instead of 3 (Costco was running a promotion.)
Even though she didn't drive, she still used a credit card for restaurants, travel, groceries, cataract surgery (Medicare does not cover cataract surgery or hearing aids), etc. I don't feel comfortable carrying around cash and most places don't take a check anymore. Some places won't even take cash (e.g. airplanes).
When she moved into the MC unit (private pay), they ran a credit check on her before they would let her in. They wanted to ensure they were going to get paid each month and doing a credit check is one of the easiest and quickest methods to ensure someone is financially trustworthy.
Without the credit worthiness, she probably will be okay. However, doing things that involve financial obligation will just take longer and be more complicated. Worse, someone might require that you put your name down to secure the bill if they are concerned that she might not be able to pay the bill.
If the car is the collateral for the car loan, I would talk to the bank about selling the car. You would need to anyway since they have the title to the car. If she has the physical title to the car, then the loan for the car is secured in a different manner.
At her age and decline, it's doubtful she will need credit again in her life for any purchase. So if value of car is same as outstanding balance, let it go.
You do need to find out how an unpaid loan works in your state in regard to probate later on.
Call whomever holds the loan to see what they need to have in front of them for you to start to talk with them on your moms behalf. If it’s the manufacturer’s lending group that is holding the loan, like what NMAC is for Nissan, they are going to need everybody in this dramas IDs and legal authority paperwork. I bought out my expiring lease last year at the height of the used car high $$$ value, in theory that is never supposed to be a good deal but it was a great deal, was some kinda crazy to get through though!
Sorry for your mom's decline. My mom also has dementia and after living with me for 7 years (not recommended) she is in AL. When her money runs out she will have to go into a medicaid accepting SNF.
No "bomb" will remove the smell permanently.
The ozone bombs were the only things that worked. And it took multiple of them. Plus the charcoal bags.
It was a good car for a great price so we bought it and the smell was included lol. We bought a couple of ozone cleaners from Amazon (people are sort of off ozone now so google). You turn the car on, set it off like a roach bomb, close all the doors and windows and let the car run with the ac on for about 15 minutes. Then you air the car out.
IIRC, we had to do 3 or 4 of them over as many days before we put a dent in it. I also bought charcoal sacks to keep in the car for a while.
So in other words, we bought it with the smoke smell knowing we would work on getting the smell out. I think it is probably ok to mention this in an ad so the buyer knows. This is all if you don’t want to be bothered with trying to get the smell out, which for us took a while after we bought it.
Carvana would be easier I’m sure but selling it outright in an old fashioned way would probably get you the most money for a small risk (cashier’s check, verify etc.)
Lots of people have recommended Carvana, but there are other car-buying companies. (Carmax.com and wepaythemax.com are two examples, not endorsements.) Make sure you shop around to get the best deal. When they ask you why you are selling the car, don't give them a sob story, they will take even more advantage of you.
Second, get a loan of your own to pay off her car, and then resell it at a higher price. You might make a profit. Since your mom still has a loan, you can’t sell her car without the title.
Third, hug your mom again.
Sell car.
Pay out loan.