Michigan is the state I live in. In December of 2017 my Mother in law had a falling out with her son who provided her with cell phone service on his plan with Sprint. She paid him $50 per month and she wasn't sure if he would eventually cut her service off so I decided to add her to my family account. She wanted a new cell phone as her's was 5 years old. We agreed to add a new phone to my account and she agreed to pay me $50 per month (20 for the service and 30 for the device payment). The cost of the phone was $875. Easy enough. 10 months later I decided to switch service providers because I was paying roughly $400 per month ( I switched from Verizon to Tmobile) in total. With the switch Tmobile provided me with an incentive of paying off all devices so I received $1600 to pay off all phones and join Tmobile. This switch had everything to do with me trying to do better on a monthly basis and nothing to do with her paying me $50 per month to continue service and pay off the device. I saved about $125 each month. This is where it gets tricky. My MIL lives in Florida and service there was patchy. She was unhappy with it so she went back to Verizon and they told her the phone had no balance and that is when the payments to me stopped. When I left Verizon for Tmobile the plan was to keep a balance with Verizon and apply my MIL's $50 per month payments directly to Verizon. (In fact I told her to send the payments to Verizon but didn't). Eventually the balance that I had above and beyond the $1600 payoff would be settled and everyone would be happy. Because the payments to me stopped after 10 months and $350 my exit/payoff plan fell apart. Now we are at a crossroad. She feels she owes not one penny and I feel she reneged on the verbal contract that she make payments to me until the $875 phone was paid off. Because this is a family matter and she sees things one way and I another it is causing issues but not so much that I would sue her.
Last edited:
