Talked with her some more, and she is on board to handle the credit card debt. She is aware of bad it is, and just hadn't wanted to discuss it due to the shame. But she's going to up her payments to $600/mo, and at 15.4% interest, it should be gone in 16 months. She will also be trying to come up with some other creative ways to get some lump sum payments on it (yard sale, etc). Not sure if her side gig will produce anything as profit in that time period that shouldn't just be reinvested, so we shall see from that.
Her income is super limited - just $540 social security and $400 from the partner's business. But, her living expenses are very minimal, so that gives her room to start fixing things.
Ultimately, she would like to be financially independent of her partner, just because it's prudent to do so. That said, the house will be hers if anything should happen to him, plus a decent amount of cash. House is worth at least $500k, probably closer to $800k (in Kauai, custom, big, paid off), and she wouldn't stay there, would sell it and move back to the mainland. However, her goal at this point is just to get her own ducks in a row and become financially literate.
So, the debt payoff is in progress, then the emergency fund, then start investing. We shall see how the earned income from the side gig goes. I was thinking Roth IRA as a spousal contribution, but I wasn't thinking about the fact that they're not actually married. So, figuring 16 months to pay off the debt, and another 4 months emergency fund, that gives her over a year-and-a-half to get the side gig producing something.
Or, maybe we will just look at her investing in taxable accounts, and keeping her annual income low enough to avoid much capital gains tax.
THanks everyone! I'm very proud of her getting this far! In our family, she was definitely discouraged from learning anything about finances, or doing anything other than finding a reliable husband and having babies, and it definitely didn't serve her well. She has a lot of catching up to do, but she is in a good position to do so, and has a very supportive partner.