If the former owner of my home is still using the address, can it harm me?
Give it to your mailman to return to sender. For this kind of material, return service is always requested, and it will let the bank know that they have incorrect address information. If the owner needs the cards, he'll contact the bank, or the bank will contact him to verify the address. Either way, as long as its not in your name, I don't think you should be worried. Don't worry about it. One of the big banks who like to whine a lot about defaulting borrowers is sending credit cards to a former resident of my home. The guy died in the late 90s.
I have prepared a report on scam's like this. I'd be happy to deliver a copy of the report to your home. Just give me your address and mail me the keys to your house and I'll drop by and leave it in your home. Oh, and tell me a time when you won't be home, so I won't bother you when I come by. It might also be helpful if you tell me if you have any cash, jewelry, or other valuables in the house and where you keep them, so I can give you advice on security measures. :-) The use of an old address would make me suspect that your data was stolen from some database you had registered to long ago with the old address.  I would think that contacting your credit rating firm and the credit card company is urgent. A person name Matthew Drury or a similar name owes money on their loan, and it has gone to collections. The collections company is trying to match the account to a real person with money. They sent a letter to somebody (your grandmother) with the same last name. The debtor may have even lived in that town at sometime.  The reason you received the letter is because your grandmother forward it on. Because the rest of your info (SSN and birth date) don't match the loan it is unlikely they can attach the debt to you. Unless you provided your address to the company you could in the future receive a letter from them. But I doubt they are going to send letters to everybody with the same name. I would not worry about it unless they actually send a letter or call you directly. Generally when items go to collection you will receive a letter in the mail not an email. You can try to dispute the charge with the credit companies (TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian) showing that the charge came after you left the country. Like the answer above me said, disputing it may cause the 7 year clock to restart which leaves it on your account longer. It may just be simpler to try to improve your credit score instead. You can check your credit score as often as you want using Credit Karma online or on your phone. Cash should never have been placed in the mailbox in the first place; this is what checks are for. I would be a bit surprised if that constitutes your accepting payment, but I Am Not A Lawyer. You need local legal advice; this is the sort of thing where local rulings matter. Definitely report the missing money to the police, no matter what else you do. You do not have to give them an opinion on whether this was a theft or an attempted fraud; just give them the facts that the tenant says they left money in the box but you didn't find it there. "There are several areas of passive fraud by being unclear on what you are doing.  When a citizen buys a house, the mortgage lender wants all the details as to how the buyer rounded up the money.  That is so they can use their own formulas to assess the buyer's creditworthiness and the probability that the buyer will be able to keep up on payments, taxes and maintenance; or have they overextended themselves. The fraud is in the withholding of that info. By way of tricking them into making a favorable decision, when they might not have if they'd had all the facts.  Then there's making this sound all lovey-dovey, good intentions, no strings attached, no expectations. You're lying to yourself.  What you've actually done is put money between yourselves, because you have not laid down FAIR rules to cover every possibility.  You're not willing to plan for failure because you don't want to admit failure is possible, which is vain.  Once you leap into this bell jar, the uncertainty of ""what happens if..."" will intrude itself into everyone's thoughts, slowly corroding your relationship.  It's a recipe for disaster.  That uncertainty puts her in a very uncomfortable position.  She has to labor to make sure the issue doesn't explode, so she's tiptoeing around you to avoid fights.  Every fight, she'll wonder if you'll play the breakup card and threaten to demand the money back.  The money will literally come between you. This is what money does.  Thinking otherwise is a young person's mistake of inexperience.  Don't take my word on it, contact Suze Orman and see what she says. Your lender is also not going to like those poorly defined lovers' promises, because they've seen it all before, and don't want to yet again foreclose on a house that fighting lovers trashed.  (it's like, superhero battles are awesome unless you own the building they trashed.)  This thing can still be done, but to remove this fraud of wishful thinking, you need to scrupulously plan for every possibility, agree to outcomes that are fair and achievable, put it in writing and share it with a neutral third party.  You haven't done it, because it seems like it would be awkward as hell - and it will be! - Or it will test your relationship by forcing direct honesty about a bunch of things you haven't talked about or are afraid to - and it will! - And to be blunt, your relationship may not be able to survive that much honesty.  But if it does, you'll be in much better shape.   The other passive fraud is taxes.  By not defining the characteristics of the payment, you fog up the question of how your contribution will be taxed (if it will be taxed). A proper contract with each other will settle that.  (there's an argument to be made for involving a tax advisor in the design of that contract, so that you can work things to your advantage.)  As an example, defining the payment as ""rent"" is about the worst you could do, as you will not be able to deduct any home expenses, she will need to pay income tax on the rent, but she can cannot take landlord's tax deductions on anything but the fraction of the house which is exclusively in your control; i.e. none." I walked away from a house last year and don't regret it a single bit.  I owed $545,000 and the bank sold it a month after moving out for $328,900.  So technically I guess I can be on the  hook to someone for the missing $216,100 for many years to come.  Oh well.  They can come after me if they want and I'll declare bankruptcy then. The issue is that the lender used two peoples income, debts, and credit history to loan both of you money to purchase a house. The only way to get a person off the loan, is to get a new loan via refinancing. The new loan will then be based on the income, debt, and credit history of one person. There is no paperwork you can sign, or the ex-spouse can sign, that will force the original lender to remove somebody from the loan. There is one way that a exchange of money between the two of you could work: The ex-spouse will have to sign paperwork to prove that it is not a loan that you will have to payback. I picked the number 20K for a reason. If the amount of the payment is above 14K they will have to document for the IRS that this is a gift, and the amount above 14K will be counted as part of their estate when they die. If the amount of the payment is less than 14K they don't even have to tell the IRS. If the ex-souse has remarried or you have remarried the multiple payments can be constructed to exceed the 14K limit. Sit down with professional with knowledge about eldercare issues. Know how your options regarding the property ownership can impact the services they qualify for. Even making a change in ownership can impact their eligibility for certain programs. Some of which can reach back to events in the recent past. Also if you own it but she will get some of the profits when you sell, she could still be considered an owner, which can impact eligibility for programs. This is in addition to the issues with the lender, the IRS, and your estate. Yes. As a general case, insurance proceeds are repaying you for the damage that you have already incurred, not specifically for fixing anything.  Since you have the legal right to sell the house as-is, without fixing it up at all, then you have the legal right to spend the insurance proceeds how you see fit. You can upgrade, downgrade, alter or replace your deck in any reasonable way... or do nothing.    You should call your agent and make sure that there is nothing unusual in your policy, but this kind of homeowner decision - what materials or methods to fix damage to a home... is very normal and unremarkable, so your agent will probably reassure you and end the conversation without a second's thought. "Can I rent a mailbox at UPS Store and use it as a physical business address? Depending on the type of business, this may not be allowed. However, there's no blanket restriction, so you need to check if for business of the type that you have this is not forbidden. In any case, there's ""business address"" and there's ""address of records"". The former can, for most part, be a PO box. The latter usually cannot. Check if Virginia requires ""address of records"" to be provided. Can I use my home address as a registered agent address? If yes, would my house be considered as a business property? or registered address is just an address that gonna receive mails from the government state? Yes, you can be your LLCs registered agent. The registered agent must be able to accept official deliveries during the regular business hours. PO box cannot be used for that purpose, it must be a physical address where there's someone present to sign for you when you're served with lawsuits and notices. If you are not at home during the regular business hours - you cannot provide your home address for that purpose. You will be using your home for business purposes, whether you're serving as your own registered agent or not. So depending on your county/city laws - it is likely that your home will be considered place of business either way. Can I use UPS mailbox store for both business address and registered agent? See above. What other options should I consider? You can hire a register agent in your State, it is usually $50-$100/year. They will scan whatever they receive and forward to you, usually within hours. Some also provide mail forwarding service (i.e.: they'll forward any mail for you, not only official correspondence), but that usually costs extra." You should probably consult an attorney. However, if the owner was a corporation/LLC and it has been officially dissolved, you can provide an evidence of that from your State's department of State/Corporations to show that their request is unfeasible. If the owner was a sole-proprietor, then that may be harder as you'll need to track the person down and have him close the plan. According to this Q&A by a Houston law professor: The law, however, is not designed to interfere with an individual's right to stop payment on a valid check because of a dispute with someone. If he didn't deliver as promised, you do not owe the money and have the right to stop payment. Assuming that you had enough money in the bank to cover the check, stopping payment is not a crime. I found several other pages essentially saying the same thing.  All the usual disclaimers apply, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.  In particular, laws might vary by state. Basically, though, it doesn't seem there's any reason why you can't stop payment on the check just because you feel like it.  If you then provide a cashier's check for the payment, your ex-partner will not really have anything to complain about.  If you're worried about annoying him by doing this, that's a separate issue, but given the situation you describe, I don't see why you should be.  If you feel he is being a pain in the neck, feel free to be a pain in the neck right back and force him to accept the payment in the manner you decide, instead of allowing him to string you along. Note two things: obviously if you have reason to believe the guy will sue you, you should act with caution.  Also, I'm not suggesting withdrawing payment completely, only stopping the check and issuing a new payment that you don't have to wait on (e.g., cashier's check). As far as I understand, equifax collects data about individuals and scores their credit worthiness. The ceo did Jack shit about keeping all that private data safe, so they got hacked and all that data is now in someone else's hands. The possible implications? Large scale identify fraud of anyone whose details got stolen, since it encompasses everything  that is needed for that. And that is besides the privacy violation. Who are the enforcers? That sounds like a government.  So we have to wait until someone gets murdered at a house before we then ostracize that house from society? That's seems horribly inefficient. A bad company could just change their address and name over and over to avoid being ostracized.   And how is a company's brand going to be hurt when it's private security company disputes every crime that company commits? Why should a company care about its brand so long as its making tons of money (think about Comcast, for example)?