My first thought was the same as yours - What happened to the money when she sold the car? Ethically that money wasn't hers, and she should have paid off the original debt first. Instead, she expects an interest free, never-ending line of credit. Minimum-wage, single mother or not, that's not right! She owes that money and should make it her first priority to get it paid back, and consider it paying for an education in financial management.

Agreed.

I did myself think "What happened to the money made from the sale of the car?" before I'd got to the paragraph mentioning it.

If she made a profit from it, then good for her (but worse in the respect of the debt owed). If she made a loss from the sale though, but still had the finance to pay the debt off, then that is what she should have done.

Whichever it was, the debt should've been repaid from the funds accumulated from the sale.

Like you said yourself though Dave; A lesson learnt in financial management perhaps. Also a lesson in verbal contracts (for both parties concerned).

I think the big take away for the readers is that they are making assumptions.

You only know a portion of the woman's life, yet there are declarations being made as if you have all of the pertinent information.

I agree that she has an ethical obligation to the orignal owner. However, the only other obligations you know about are her obligations to her child, her landlord and her job. You literally do not know why she sold the car, if she profitted from that sale, or her other debts.

This is a very leading story, and the path it leads to is not one that is well substantiated.

You raise a good point, Chrystoph, but then again it also seems like you might be an apologist given your "there are factors you don't know that explain what's going on". Remember, she came to me asking for advice. :-)

There are always additional reasons and explanations, and there's the fact that she appears to have relied on her ex-husband offering to help pay for the car, but, again, without that in writing, she should never have assumed that money would show up.

Financial management is a pain in a capitalist world where we're constantly extolled that we should consume, consume, consume, but I think that ethically paying off debts should always beat out getting the newer, fancier, nicer. That's my bias, and I hope I'm clear with it in this article and elsewhere on my site.

But let me ask you this: if this gal would have come to you for advice, Chrystoph, what would you have responded?

I can see where you might think apologist, but, honestly, I really don't care about the specific situation so much as the fact that the readers are making a LOT of baseless assumptions. I see this a lot on the web, and it is of great concern to me because it has a penchant for making completely imaginary "facts".

As for the situation, the law as defined "where this is happening" may or may not be the same as "here". My advice would be to actually define a contract between the two parties and have it signed & notorized.

This way, she commits to the obligation in definite terms and the other party she owes money to has a legally recognizable document. What the terms are would be beyond the scope of this discussion because we don't know what her financial situation is.

If you want an opinion of the failure in the original agreement, I would say that it SEEMS to be a lack of communication.