More than half the income goes to paying the power bill due to arrears that don't even belong to us. (Before I was born, or maybe shortly after that, my mother moved out of an apartment where she was paying the power. She turned off the power. The new tenants turned the power back on in her name. They didn't pay. The power company won't write it off even with the old rent receipts proving the fraud. The bill is over 20 years old.)
Has your mother talked to a Lawyer? It doesn't cost a thing to make a phone call and ask questions and depending on your situation, you may find certain lawyers to be very helpful. The stereotypes about them aren't all true, case in point:
I was hurt on the job (minor injury that required some stitches) and my employer had insurance. They told me it wasn't a problem and I went back to work that same day. 2 years later after I had long since left that job, I started getting calls from bill collectors. My former boss never filed the paperwork for his insurance to pay the claim and dodged the bill collectors for 2 years. So they finally came after me and started making threatening phone calls.
I called a lawyer in town and explained my situation. Worker's comp wasn't his specialty and he was only going to get a very small fee for it if we won. So small of a fee that it wasn't worth it to him at all. But just hearing my story and the dickishness of my old boss made him take my case. We won, and when I got the check, the lawyer didn't even take the 20% he was entitled to by law (and he had even driven me around to go to court, filed court papers, etc). He just said merry Christmas and that he was happy to stick it to a jackass - my former boss had to pay the medical bill +$200 in damages to me.
Point being - have your mom call a lawyer if she hasn't already.
My rant:
T-Mobile. Screw T-Mobile so goddamn much. They have been charging me for handset protection for 2 years on a phone that I did not want protection on. I did not want or ask for this protection because it was already an old phone at the time
they added protection. To make it worse, they've been hiding the charge within my bill so I didn't even know I was being charged. They only showed the insurance charge for the one phone I asked for it on - I have no idea where the other charge was showing up on our bill. I only found out about it because I went to cancel the insurance on the other phone and they told me I had it on both. WTH
This is the second time they have completely mislead me in this way. My contract is up in December and that won't be soon enough.
