cancel a phone line

So last month he upgraded his phone on your dime?   By the way there's an unattractive name for this and it's called being a credit mule. You should never allow anyone to run up a debt on your credit. Which is what he's done. It may have been very intentional. But you do have some recourse.  Because he's on your account both his phone number and his phone belong to you. He cannot use the phone somewhere else because it's being financed on your account. This does give you the power.

So here's a few things you can do.

1.   If it is still less than 30 days since he bought a new phone, you can add insurance. 

2.    Let him know that He needs to accept billing responsibility for his phone line give him a very limited amount of time to do so. Let him know you will suspend his phone line if he doesn't.  

https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1045265/

     I will assume that his credit is not good and he will not be able to assume billing responsibility or that he just will refuse to do it. 

 3.   Then report his phone stolen.  

When you do this, the phone will be blacklisted and the phone number will be suspended.  Expect angry ex to contact... Let him know his option is now to return the phone in excellent condition in order to get his phone number back. Something tells me he won't care. He will sacrifice his phone number and destroy the phone.  But let's be optimistic first.

4.   If he returns the phone to you, and it's still in good condition enough to sell it to recoup some of your money, cancel the phone line, use the proceeds you get from selling the phone to pay off the remaining installments. 

5.  If he shocks and surprises us both by agreeing to accept billing responsibility and wants to keep the phone and use the phone and he really wants his phone number back:  Then you can agree to release his phone number to him using a transfer of billing responsibility.

If he agrees to that you can give him the phone back remove it from the blacklist and you are free of the entire debt.

6.  If his character proves to be as I suspect,  rather poor, then he will either destroy the phone during the process of returning it to you in which case you make an insurance claim return the damaged phone to AT&T and get a replacement from Asurion. You can then attempt to recoup at least some of the damages by selling that phone, canceling the phone line and paying off what was owed with the proceeds

Good luck.

Never allow someone to use you as a credit mule. And I speak from experience. My first husband was a leech. He ran up considerable debt in my name. Went to school while I worked to pay for everything. Because of the constant volatile behavior on his part I eventually came to my senses and threw him out. But that did leave me with thousands of dollars in debt for which I had to hock a lot of stuff to pay off

If you cancel that line, you’ll be billed the remainder owed on the phone. You might also consider reporting the phone lost or stolen and getting it blacklisted so that the ex can’t continue to use it.

Hi @krissydixon0820, we're here to assist you!

Appreciated @formerlyknownas for providing the relevant information.

As the Ace mentioned, you can transfer the billing responsibility. Please go through the article on how that is done. (http://sm.att.com/20cc96b5)

You can also cancel the line, if you're the primary account holder, by calling our customer service team at 800-331-0500. Please go through our article for the same. (http://sm.att.com/5eadbf55)

Or you can report the phone as lost/stolen, so that the device is blacklisted, and the number will be suspended.

Let us know if you have any more questions.

Thank you visiting AT&T Community Forums!
Antony, AT&T Community Specialist.