I am a divorcee with three children. Ex left me with all family debt, mortgage, etc so I had to rely on using credit cards and Line of Credit to survive (to the tune of $20k). I ended up being forced to sell the house so I went back to school to upgrade my education ($30K in student loans). The proceeds from the sale of the matrimonial home went into trust with my lawyer and my ex's lawyer while our case went to court.

In the middle of my schooling, I became financially strapped because ex refused to pay child support and child care. I was going to lose my rental housing and become homeless because there was no more money left after tuition, etc. In desperation, I asked my very wealthy mother for a loan to purchase a mobile home for $47K so I wouldn't become homeless and lose the children (the ex's plan). I did not have a good relationship with my mother and it was only with great reluctance that I even asked but I risked losing my kids if I didn't. (For what it's worth, about six years earlier, my mother screwed me out of 80K by selling an investment she had originally promised to sell to me. Instead of making a $20K profit on me as she would have, she dillied and dallied for eight months waiting for the investment to grow, then she sold it to someone else for $80k. If she had been honest with me in the first place about changing her mind, I would have been able to have invested my m oney elsewhere and saved myself $80k. As it was, I had to pay way more money for way less product. Why did she do this? According to her "it was in her best interests.")

In any case, my mother agreed to lend me the money since my court case over the assets was due soon and I was told by my lawyer to expect the judge to reapportion the assets in my favour since my ex owed me so much money for everything. We signed a promissory note in which I promised to pay her back after the trial in 2008. The mobile home is in my name and she has no legal entitlement to it (she has tried to put a lien on it and hasn't been able to).

Well, the judge did not rule as expected because my ex lied about debts he had, claiming they were from the marriage, so I ended up getting virtually nothing after lawyer's fees. Then my ex went after what I DID get, demanding I also pay his lawyers fees. It cost me virtually all of what I had gotten to fight that (had to – his lawyers fees were way more than what I got in the first place). Needless to say, I wasn't able to pay my mother back as promised but I voluntarily began making monthly payments of $250 to her while I was still in school (which continued to rack up my credit card and Line of Credit to do so).

I have made those payments regularly and consistently since then, but I am now unable to find a job because I had to remove my children from daycare in order to afford the payments to her. I did try to sell the mobile home last summer but wasn't able to because I couldn't afford the pad rental and I ran out of credit to live on. I moved in with a friend 300km away and rented it out for the cost of pad rental and my mother's loan payments which has helped ease up my strained finances somewhat. It's a horrible catch 22, though, because I still can't afford daycare, which means I can't look for work.

I plan to try to sell the mobile home again in the spring since the tenants will be moving out then. My relationship with my mother is terminally broken (not about this, but about something else very trivial) and I fully intend to pay her back every single penny I borrowed. However, I absolutely MUST start looking out for my best interests and those of my kids because I am struggling with the debtload and going absolutely nowhere with my credit card debts (and the student loan payments haven't even kicked in yet).

My question is this: Would it be in my best interests to sell the mobile home for the 45K I could get for it, apply 20K of that money to my credit debts and pay my mother the reminder while continuing to make monthly payments, or should I pay my mother the entire amount and continue to pay the credit debt with terribly high interest rates? Should I apply the entire 45K to ALL my debts and just have the payments to make to my mother then? I'm not concerned about damaging the relationship with my mother since that's already done like dinner. I know I will pay her back in full – I just want to know what the best way to do it would be where I can enough money to put the kids in daycare so I can stand a chance at obtaining a job (the waiting lists here for daycare are months long).

Thank you.

CarlyQ