Is there any way that I can get my senior mother-in-law on a "do not loan to" list for payday loans?

If she is mentally competent there is not much you can do. These payday loan places are the scum of the earth and prey on people who are either desperate for money or have terrible judgement about money. If money is tight in your family I would not continue to bail these folks out. You may be enabling this crazy behavior. Does she have dementia?

It's a long shot but check with (a) your state to see if there's an elder support agency that provides free legal advice (b) your local congresspeople and senators for the same issue, as well as whether or not there's any committee or subcommittee dealing with elder exploitation, (c) the local police and (d) specific task forces at local, state or federal level addressing elder financial exploitation.

If there are specific elder statutes addressing financial abuse, there might be an opportunity for law enforcement to become involved and go after the payday loan companies. If there are any congressional or senate hearings on this issue, providing names of these companies would allow subpoenas to be issued and reps would have to appear publicly to address their actions. It's not an ideal solution, more like chipping away at the exploitation iceberg.

Another really long shot is getting PPOs (injunctions) against each of the payday loan suppliers to prevent them from contacting her, via e-mail, phone, text, mail, and any other method. It would probably be a unique application of injunctive relief, but it's worth a try.

I think the only way you can stop her though is to take over her finances, even if she is lucid. However, it could be argued that her mere behavior is not representative of responsible behavior and warrants intervention.

Do you think a heart-to-heart talk with her would work? With 3 months delinquency in her mortgage, she's approaching the stage at which foreclosure notices would be sent, if they haven't already. Would she understand that she could lose the house through foreclosure?

I wouldn't normally advocate for guardianship, but in this case I think it's warranted. Your FIL is going to need insurance for cancer treatment, and that merits stepping in and taking control of your MIL regardless of how much she objects.

Just thought of something else. What is MIL using this money for? Gifts, sundries, etc.? Perhaps you could take her shopping once a week or so and buy her those things (legitimate purchases, not just junk) and pre-empt her spending, since you're already helping out - just rechannel the money.

Another thought is to take FIL to his bank, set up a separate account and have his SS directly deposited to that account. Don't tell MIL. At least there would be some money to make mortgage and insurance payments.

However, I do think there's some emotional and mental addiction involved in this kind of spending and use of money that goes beyond just helping them out. There was a theory I learned in economics but I can't recall the name of it - it addresses spending money just to make one feel good. With FIL's cancer, that might be part of her need to spend money.

Not everyone understands "loans" and "interest rates". But would your Mom-in-law understand that what she is buying using money from a payday loan, she is actually paying double?

Example, if she is buying things for herself, that money from payday she is now paying double for items. That nice sweater that was on sale for $35 was actually $70 if she used the payday money.

I have never used a pay-day loan place, but I would think that if you stop paying off these loans, they will stop loaning her more money. As the interest charges pile up and the collection agency calls start, she will either need to hand the finances over to you to manage or declare bankruptcy. In the meantime, make sure that father-in-law gets his insurance back so that he can get the treatment he needs.

geniuschef - I feel for you. We had the same problem with my MIL. In our case it was extreamly difficult to try to manage as we are in Oregon and she was in

Crap! Hit post by mistake! She was in Pennsylvania. Hubby's sister was about two hours away from her mom. With MIL it wasn't payday sharks but credit cards. MIL was a scammer most her life - built up huge bills then declared bankruptcy a few times. At this point she had functional dementia - could take care of herself physically but her regularly warped thinking was even worse. MIL would get visa offers in the mail and on line - she would open them all, charge to the limit, never make a payment and move on. Being these weren't reputable companies it was the fees and interest that added up to staggering amounts. We never would get wind of a particular bill until she would finally tell her daughter when a collection agency would get exceptionally aggressive. I can't tell you how many times we bailed her out. I was continually amazed that she kept getting new offers - but I guess that's how these scammers work - targeting older folks. It took awhile and some tough conversations - finally telling her we were done, to get it to stop. Shortly after MIL was moved to a nursing home and a few years later passed from cancer. I don't have a solution for you - but wanted to tell you you aren't alone in this. Good luck.

Thank you for all of your ideas! @gardenartist you have given such great suggestions! My Hubby and I have been trying for years to get them to stay on a budget. If we could just stop that payday loans that would help TREMENDOUSLY AND you have brought about another important point. She is a hoarder. I'm not being hyperbolic either. ( I haven't stepped foot in their house in over 10 years.) But to many of your points, yes we've had these discussions with both her and HIM since he's the primary bread winner. They get offended and stop talking to us. It's very very stressful for us because so much is going on behind the scenes and we're only stepping in this last time because soon we'll be having our first child we're buying our OWN home for the first time, AND my FIL has cancer so we have to make sure he receives treatment. We can't solve this without them, as he is very old school. We keep begging him to to NOT give her his entire check every month expecting her to pay the bills. She is an extremely poor money manager.( obviously) And @fregflyer those payday loans are 400% if she doesn't pay them back after a week.(which she doesn't) @askdaughter Yes we JUST paid today FIL's insurance to get him caught up had to take it from our downpayment savings yet again.I'll never be resentful about THAT bail out. If I knew that this would be the end of this I'd be more than okay. But she is going to keep on getting those multiple loans because they do not require a credit check. I wish they had a data base that wouldn't allow more than one payday loan out while there is already one out. @rainmom THANKS! you don't know how great it feels to know I'm not alone.

Is she driving herself to these places?
You need to stop paying these loans....worst case her credit gets so bad she vacant get loans.

@ismiami that's the problem! She's taken to internet loans.We're very grateful that due to her rural area she doesn't have home internet but, she's exhausted all the local branches and now takes them online. Somehow there's this endless supply of them!

Keeping an elder off the internet is not difficult. Get a nanny program and control the sites she goes to. If you are not tech savvy enough to do this yourself, hire a geek for a day....try Best Buy.

but she said she doesn't have home internet, so where is she getting on it at?

DebDaughter raises a good question. How is she getting to places where she has Internet access? Is she driving? If you know where she's getting online, you can try talking to the management and asking if they'll restrict her access by telling her she needs to pay $xxx or something and just don't let her use the computers.

FedEx Kinkos as well as many others have computers available for use; maybe that's where she's going.

It's amazing how crafty some of these elderly loved ones with dementia can be. My MIL was hard pressed to put on two matching shoes but could get internet access and take out credit cards - then go on an on-line shopping spree!

but how?

Geniuschef, when my dad 76 year old dad started asking me for money I offered to take over his finances for him. Luckily he agreed. If he would not have agreed I would not have given him any money.

After I took over his finances I found out that he had 7 payday loans at 7 different payday loan stores!!!!

I think you need to give them an ultimatum, either they hand over their finances to you or no more money.

Oh This is crafty She has a brand new QVC laptop, drives around the town where there is free wifi. The nanny program is a great idea! I think we'll try that. We were able to get her SS number in order to pay her medicare premiums so, we are going to use it to get a credit report to see what else she's hiding. Years ago, decades actually, she hid credit cards from her husband when they filed bankruptcy. If she won't be forthcoming when we ask then we'll just have to bypass her.

thankfully, I think my dad only used one and only got one at a time; that's all he could handle, even then he was getting close to not being able to pay his bills, once he paid off his payday loan because of course as you keep doing them they then just get higher and higher; he knew if it got to that point I would step in and he would have let me because he was getting desperate, so he finally just quit, as also thankfully his reason for doing them quit as well; not sure exactly what happened there - he was doing it actually for somebody else, not sure if their reason stopped or they just saw the writing on the wall and stopped - just glad, otherwise not sure what would have actually ended up happening

My sister-in-law's mother fell prey to scammers and was giving away tons of money through the U.S. mail. Her husband fixed that by setting up a P. O. Box. This might work for your sutuation? Idk.

Yes, you should not pay off anything. Not ur responsibility. If they lose the house thats FILs problem. You may want to check out companies that help people with their credit. There may be a way of stopping her from getting loans. Paydays have really high interest.

question - should they even be paying these off - or more to my point - if they've done something like this with credit cards - should they pay those off?

Children are not responsible for parents debts. If I were the FIL all cards would be cancelled. This poor man is going to lose everything because of this woman.