The first time I heard about Diego Pruitt, I was standing near a folding table at a neighborhood barbecue in north Raleigh, listening to a mutual friend describe a situation that stopped me mid-bite. A young widower. A stack of debt notices he hadn’t expected. An auto loan on a car that was worth far less than he owed. Our friend, who knew I covered economic relief and tax issues, pulled out her phone and texted Diego right there, asking if he’d be willing to talk. He said yes before the burgers were off the grill.
I sat down with Diego Pruitt three weeks later at a coffee shop near his apartment — a sparse, well-organized place he’d moved into about eight months after his wife, Camille, passed away in March 2024. He was 30 years old, working as a flight attendant out of Raleigh-Durham International Airport, and earning roughly $72,000 a year. By most measures, he was doing fine. But the financial picture he described was significantly more complicated than his income suggested.
The Debt That Arrived After the Grief
Diego told me that the first notice arrived in July 2024 — about four months after Camille died of a sudden cardiac event at 29. It was a collections letter from a credit card company he’d never heard of, addressed to Camille but forwarded to his address. Then another arrived. Then a third. By August, he had traced four separate credit card accounts opened in Camille’s name alone, carrying a combined balance of $23,400.
“I didn’t know those cards existed,” Diego told me, his voice flat and careful. “She handled a lot of the household finances. I trusted that. And I think she was trying to protect me from worrying — but it put me in a really bad spot.”
Because the accounts were opened solely in Camille’s name, Diego was not automatically liable for those balances. But the situation grew more complicated when he began reviewing the joint tax returns they had filed together in 2022 and 2023. Camille had underreported freelance income on both returns — income Diego said he had no knowledge of. The IRS had flagged the discrepancy and issued a notice of deficiency totaling $8,200 in back taxes, penalties, and interest. That notice arrived in September 2024.
Underwater Before He Even Knew It
The tax debt was not Diego’s only problem. In the spring of 2023 — about a year before Camille died — they had financed a new SUV together. The purchase price was $44,500. By the time Diego sat down with me, the outstanding loan balance was $41,800. A recent dealer appraisal had put the vehicle’s current market value at roughly $26,000.
That gap — nearly $15,800 — left him in what lenders call a negative equity position. He owed significantly more than the car was worth, and because the vehicle was financed jointly, the loan had been part of the estate settlement. He’d kept the car because he needed it for work-related ground transportation. But the monthly payment of $847 was a weight he described as increasingly difficult to carry alongside everything else.
“The car felt like the last thing I could deal with,” he told me. “Every month I’m paying almost nine hundred dollars for something that’s worth half what I owe on it. After everything else — the grief, the debt notices — that number just sat there.”
Finding the IRS Innocent Spouse Relief Program
The $8,200 IRS notice was the item Diego tackled first, partly because ignoring it carried the most immediate consequences. A colleague at his airline mentioned that the IRS has a program specifically designed for situations like his — cases where one spouse was unaware of the other’s tax errors or omissions. Diego looked it up and found the IRS Innocent Spouse Relief program, which falls under three separate provisions: traditional innocent spouse relief, separation of liability relief, and equitable relief.
As Diego explained to me, he filed Form 8857 — the Request for Innocent Spouse Relief — in October 2024. The form required him to document that he had not known about, and had no reason to know about, the underreported income. He submitted Camille’s death certificate, copies of the joint returns, bank statements showing separate finances, and a written statement describing their financial arrangement during the marriage.
The IRS acknowledged receipt of his Form 8857 in November 2024. In February 2025 — roughly four months after he submitted it — Diego received a determination letter granting him full relief under the traditional innocent spouse provision. The $8,200 liability, including penalties and interest, was removed from his account entirely.
What the Relief Did — and Didn’t — Fix
The IRS decision was meaningful. But Diego was careful not to describe it as a turning point that resolved everything. The credit card debt in Camille’s name — the $23,400 across four accounts — was a separate matter. Because those accounts were in her name only, creditors could not legally pursue Diego for repayment of those balances under North Carolina law. But verifying that required him to consult with a consumer law attorney, which cost him $350 for a one-hour consultation.
“The innocent spouse thing was a genuine relief,” Diego told me. “Eight thousand dollars is real money. But I still have the car situation. I still had to pay a lawyer just to confirm I didn’t owe money on cards I didn’t even know existed. It’s a lot of steps just to get back to zero.”
On the auto loan, Diego’s options were more limited. He contacted his lender — a major national bank — in January 2025 and asked about a loan modification or refinancing. The bank confirmed that refinancing was not feasible given the negative equity, and offered no hardship modification because Diego’s income had not declined. He was current on payments and considered low-risk. That assessment, while accurate, offered him no practical relief.
Where He Stands Now
When I followed up with Diego in late March 2026, he was two years removed from Camille’s death and — in his own words — somewhere between exhausted and cautiously steady. The IRS relief had removed the most urgent threat. The car was still a problem he was waiting to outlast rather than solve, making extra principal payments when work schedules allowed to reduce the gap between what he owed and what the vehicle was worth.
He had also started working with a nonprofit credit counselor — not a debt settlement company, he was clear about that distinction — to review his overall financial picture. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, nonprofit credit counselors are required to provide services regardless of a client’s ability to pay and are legally prohibited from steering clients toward products that benefit the counselor. Diego said that distinction mattered to him after a difficult year of navigating institutions he’d had no reason to deal with before.
“I’m not where I want to be,” he told me. “But I know what I’m dealing with now. That’s different from a year ago. A year ago I was opening envelopes and not even knowing what I was reading.”
Diego told me he wished he’d known about the innocent spouse relief program earlier. He found it by accident through a coworker’s offhand comment. The IRS does publish Form 8857 and its instructions publicly at IRS.gov, but Diego said nothing in the deficiency notice itself mentioned the possibility of applying for it.
What Diego’s experience captures is a specific financial scenario that doesn’t have a clean resolution — one where a high income doesn’t insulate you from the consequences of information you didn’t have. He wasn’t reckless. He wasn’t uninformed about money in general. He was blindsided. And the path back wasn’t one program or one phone call. It was a sequence of steps, some of which worked and some of which are still ongoing.
Sitting across from him in that coffee shop, I noticed he never once described feeling sorry for himself — only frustrated that the systems involved required so much navigation at a moment when he had very little bandwidth. That distinction, I think, is worth something.
Related: Your IRS Refund Tracker Went Blank After Filing — Here’s What That Actually Means in 2026
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