Adinva, I'm sorry for what your sister is going through. I'll defer the technical advice to 25, who said a lot of what was going through my mind. I agree that it would be better for her to divorce him, though from a practical matter I'm not sure that option is even available to her, depending on what state she lives in. However, I am not a lawyer.
I am a financial professional, and what I will tell you from that perspective is that people who allow themselves to get into serious debt (and it sounds like this was your sister before the medical issues) tend to stay there. If they are rescued, whether by bankruptcy or a generous family member, they tend to find themselves in the same situation within a couple of years. I have attempted to counsel a number of people in that situation and they just really don't seem to want to believe that math works. If they ever do pull themselves together it's because something happened to change how they saw their future.
Bankruptcy is likely in your sister's future. I doubt it will be worse than what she's living with right now. Like so much of what we fear, it's probably not the worst thing that will happen to her. If she goes through it in a managed way her livelihood can be preserved. If she waits for everything to get repossessed, she'll have a worse struggle.
What you're doing -- listening with love and supporting her as best you can (NOT financially) is probably the best thing you probably can do for her.
I don't want to sound like a harda$$, but it seems to me that she has her own rock bottom to hit. I can only imagine how hard that must be to watch and I feel for you. I know how frustrating it is to see in the people I meet with and they're just acquaintances. I imagine you watch her and just see the path through so clearly. It must be very frustrating. But if she is willing to get herself into this situation and resists advice, there's little you can do about that. People can't be changed until something makes them want to change, and that something is rarely another person pointing things out to them.
((((((Adinva)))))
Me42, H40 D12, S8, S7 A revealed: 7/13 Sep 4/14; Agreed to D 1/15
