‘Daddy Put a Freeze on Mom’s Money.’ How do we raise it?
A credit freeze allows you to prevent anyone from accessing your credit report to open new accounts in your name. Some people choose to freeze their credit after being notified of a data breach that exposed their personal information, while others do so as a preventative measure even if their data is not exposed.
There was a record number of data breaches in 2025, up 5% from the previous year, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. So it is not surprising that people are looking for ways to protect themselves. But while freezing debt is one of the best ways to do so, it can be problematic if you can’t easily lift that freeze.
That’s the predicament a woman recently posted on the r/personalfinance subreddit found her mother in. The user’s father stopped her mother’s debt, but he died, and the daughter does not know how to discharge her mother’s debt.
“Dad froze my mom’s credit. She’s dead. No one can access her Experian online account. She doesn’t even understand what a credit freeze means,” she wrote. “I try to make everything easy for my mother.”
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Pro tip: Contact the three major credit reporting agencies
When you check your credit, you do so through the three major credit reporting agencies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. To release your debt, you need to contact three agencies again.
Each agency has specific instructions on how to set up or suspend credit, although you can usually do so easily online, or by calling or emailing. In general, you can discharge your credit permanently, or do so temporarily, which may be useful for someone who needs to allow lenders access to their credit to open a new account.
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Agencies need to complete unfreeze requests made online or by phone within one hour, according to USAGov, the official site of the US General Services Administration. Email release requests must occur within three business days.
The user is in a very challenging situation, as he needs to unlock someone else’s account and does not have access to his mother’s Experian login information. He can call the bureaus directly. The phone numbers listed for freeing credit are (888) 298-0045 for Equifax, (888) 397-3742 for Experian and (800) 916-8800 for TransUnion.
If these numbers bring her to an automated messaging system asking for her mother’s information that she doesn’t have access to, she may need to contact customer service numbers directly and ask to speak to a representative.
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