For the rigorous solution, websearch "family mortgage". There are some legal subtleties, and you must charge at least a minimal amount of interest; that interest is taxable income for the lender.

Presumably the $37K is the original amount deposited and thus the CD has increased in value due to quarterly (or monthly?) interest payments since the date of creation. If your family member simply cashes in the CD early, there will be a penalty which might be interest accrued since the last interest payment but not yet paid into the CD, or maybe one month or one quarter's interest etc. If this is acceptable to the family member, you could just stay out of the whole matter.

This is a good point and I’m asking her to get details on the early withdrawal penalty. She’s only had this cd a short time (I think the term was less than a year). Hopefully that means the penalties would be small? We’ll find out.

Don't lend money to a family or friends that you aren't prepared to (a) gift them, or (b) end the relationship over and go to court and still probably not get it back..

@gwcoffey Early withdrawal penalties on a 1-year CD typically range from 3-6 months of interest. With 1-year CD rates in the low single digits, I'd expect the penalty to be in the range of a few hundred dollars, which might well be worth it to simplify the situation and avoid debt between family.

I assume you are American, and we are talking about the US, but it would still be nice to dismiss all doubts by tagging the questions with the united-states tag.

A CD to me is a Compact Disc. What does it mean in the context of (presumably American) finance?

@ChrisMelville If you're going to peruse a financial website, don't expect others to cater to the lowest common denominator. Googling "financial CD" in your favorite (presumably non-American) search engine would have taken less time than your comment for such a non-esoteric acronym.

@MonkeyZeus - Seems that it means "Certificate of Deposit". I needed to make the comment, however, to make the point to the OP that it's not a generally recognised term, and they should not have used this initialism in the question.

@ChrisMelville: The expansion is right there in the tags, and has been since the question was first posted.

The best way to loan money to family is to direct them to a bank. I know that's more personal advice than financial, but, seriously, don't do it.

CD is an extremely "generally recognized term"...

I agree with @ChrisMelville . It is polite when introducing an acronym that may not be universally known to explain what it is on first usage. We don't all live in the USA, so we don't all know CD automatically. It sounds like what we in Australia would call a Term Deposit, and I bet if I started talking about a TD there would be confused looks.

I think it’s only (or at least mostly) a U.S. term. In Canada it would be a non-redeemable term deposit or GIC. A United States tag would have avoided the issue since those unfamiliar with details of US financial products would simply ignore some or all of the question.

I think Certificate of Deposit is something akin to a "Term Deposit" in the western world. You promise to not withdraw that money for X days and earn some additional interest for that. Breaking a TD costs you a fee,and you won't earn any interest.