I received a 1099c from B of A for my estate.(I am alive and well) It does not look like a 1099c I have looked up on the IRS web site. I checked my credit report with Experian and I have no credit score because B of A and Sears list me as deceased. I tried to call the number on "1099c" and they were not very nice and kept pretending to try to connect me to the Estate department. How do I know this is a real 1099c? Should I file it on my taxes while I am trying to figure this out to be safe?

Please clarify:

1. How do you know this 1099-C is for your estate? Is it addressed to "the estate of ..." as opposed to simply being addressed to you?
2. Is your SS number properly listed on the document?
3. Is this for a credit card that you have through B of A, such as a Visa or MasterCard? Or is it a Sears card administered by B of A?
4. What do you mean by they "pretend" to connect you to the BofA estate department?

About the validity of this document: it's not unusual for firms to issue a "substitute 1099" that looks different than the standard form. The only requirement is that they must make reference to the same appropriate box numbers as on the standard form. Thus its OK if they simply sent a form called a substitute 1099-C with numbers labelled as boxes 1 through 7.

I could understand that if they thought you had died they might write off your outstanding balance and issue the 1099-C to document that. You need to contact B of A customer service and work out how much you actually owe on the card and have them issue a corrected 1099-C.

It is addressed to my estate. It does have my last 4 soc sec on it. It is not part of sears. When I called B of A the woman on other end kept telling me to hold she was trying to find someone in Estate dept. Went on for a quite a few minutes I ended up hanging up.