Suze Orman

Go on.

And so does everybody else who happens to have parents that are as irresponsible as Carla's when it comes to money and is willing to say, here, kids, you deal with the fact that we have been financial screw-ups.

Okay?

Just that simple.

And trust me, there are many out there.

Carla, sweetheart, listen to me.

Number one, as long as you don't put your name on anything...

As long as you don't say you'll take responsibility for it, you are not responsible for any credit cards that they have in their names.

When they both die, then those debts will absolutely go away.

However, when one of them dies, the other is still going to be responsible.

And that's what you have to think about because there is where we might have a problem.

They're both in their 80s.

Maybe one of them has a pension like your father.

He dies before your mother.

Now we've lost one social security check.

Maybe we've lost a pension check like I just talked about a few minutes ago.

And now your mom...

or the surviving parent has less money available than they did with even more and more credit card debt.

And guess what?

Now they've maxed out on their credit cards.