Who is legally responsible for a dead persons bills?

I think next of kin is but don't quote me on that.

I am not sure who gets the bills if everyone else is dead.

I dont think my mother has much to worry about. She is a sister, not a spouse, parent or child.. so I dont think she has as much legal responsibility as ..say.. Mr Wolf would if his mother died.

but im not sure about either situation and my mother is getting very worried.
My aunt , right now , has tipped the scales at 500. Has an oxygen tank and has asthma.. on top of heart problems, is a smoker..
She has right to be scared of my aunts life.. seeing as how she lives with her.

In general....

When someone dies, all the assests in their estate are frozen.

Outstanding debt must be paid off before any disbursements from the remaining estate are made to relatives or whoever has been named in a will.

That is, unless the deceased has protected some of the assets through trusts, etc. but that gets more complicated, and it doesn't sound like that is the issue here.

If the deceased has named others on debts as liable, co-signers, etc. then yes, that person would be liable.

If you are connected in no way financially to your aunt, you are not liable.

If you MIL dies with debt, the debtors can and will put a lien on her house.

Unless her estate is over 1.5 million (might have been raised to 2 million), you don't have to worry about estate tax, and even then, the first 1.5 million are not subject to the estate tax.

OK-I'm not a lawyer, so this here is my disclaimer that I might very well have my head up my butt, and so y'all can't sue me.

We already knew that Chai, so it's ok. :wink:

BTW - there's a weekly or monthly thing that goes on here in A. that people can't go to in order to get some legal information for free.

Very general, but might be enough to help you.

I'll try to think of the name of the program.....

When my nan died my dad(her son)found some unpaid bills from a clothing catalogue for a small fortune.
He wrote to the company explaining the situation and they kindly agreed if he sent back any unused clothes they wont expect him to pay anything.
It was quite a bit of money, 4 figures but they let it slide, so maybe a kindly worded letter may help with certain bills.

Like a lot of things, it depends (on what the debts are like, the state in question, whether there are any claims to the estate, etc.). Some bills may be forgiven in the event of death (student loans, I believe, though that may have changed). Many more, I am guessing, will not.

If your husband is a joint owner of any of your M-I-L's assets (home, car, stocks, bonds, boat, motorcycle, retirement funds, whatever), and the property is seized for nonpayment of bills, ack, that could be a big problem for him, credit-wise. It wouldn't necessarily permanently hurt his credit rating, but it would possibly open up a situation wherein he would have to do some personal damage control. So if there are a lot of bills, it might not be a bad idea to divest of the assets now, seeing as they will probably be seized by creditors, anyway. The better for your husband if he is out of that loop as much as possible.

Shifting gears to your aunt -

The bankruptcy laws are changing, and it's about to become a lot more difficult to declare bankruptcy. If your aunt has ever thought of declaring bankruptcy, or if her family has considered that at all, now's the time to act, as in before the end of the calendar year. Bankruptcies are at an all-time high right now because the laws are changing.

After death, it's next of kin or whoever is administering the estate who is responsible for making sure the bills are paid but who (I believe) is not personally financially liable. This person could be you, could be someone appointed by the state, could be someone named in a will, if there is one.

Bottom line, though, is that, it is my understanding, the bills are to be paid out of whatever is in the estate. And once that's gone, it's gone. Creditors will line up, secured creditors (such as a bank, versus someone she may have informally borrowed money from) go first, and it's all in a very specific order as dictated by law. But once the cash is gone, it's gone, so you can end up with situations wherein if there is $50k in debt and only $30k in assets, if $10k of the debt is secured, those creditors get all of their money, but the remaining $20k in assets is split among everyone else looking for the last $40k in debt - so some creditors may go home empty-handed or with maybe a few cents on the dollar.

I'm sure Debra or Joe can elaborate and I bet I'm not remembering it all perfectly correctly.

Yeah.
my mother did that when my grandmother died.
Most small companies ( mail order, catalog, grocery stores etc..) will let small bills slide.

Im worried about home loans, credit cards etc.

My mother is worried about the personal and cred card loans my aunt has.

Pretty grim topic, but if MIL were to die , I want to expect... or at last have an idea.

((OK-I'm not a lawyer, so this here is my disclaimer that I might very well have my head up my butt, and so y'all can't sue me. ))
Damn chai, you just took all the fun out of it.

hey, you know, just cma!

what if slappy or what was his name? lololo or lelele or something read this?

Actually, I'm afraid DebraLaw would tut tut at me if I didn't.

Chai - it's probably called something like Legal Services or County Legal Services.

When I was still in Law School, I worked for such a place, it was for Legal Aid for non-criminal matters. I handled (gulp) divorce papers, a fun topic then as I'm sure it would be now.

too bad people cant just have a civil divorce.
they gotta attack from any angle they can.
mine was simple.
Aint seen the man in 7 years
no property, no kids, no nothing. Didnt even know if he was still alive.
The lawyer asked me if I wanted to go for 1/2 his assets. . .

>sigh<
I almost picked someone else due to his comment.
But then i realized , I WAS probally a minority for NOT going that route and he was just covering all bases.
Sad.

Right! that's it.....

Not to butt in shewolf, but jespah reminding me of the name just popped my ears!

More than 6 years after I divorced my first husband, I got served with papers because HE was going bankrupt.

Ya see, when we divorced we were living in Fla, in the middle of building a house there, and we owned this one in austin.

The agreement was I kept texas property and he kept fla property, and names on mortgages, titles were to be adjusted.

Well, of course he didn't do that on his end. I learned he hadn't been living in the fla house for well over a year, he had remarried, was renting that house out, but was pocketing the rent instead of paying the mortgage. Now they were trying to say I was liable.

Long story short, the term "damage control" took on a whole new meaning. I ended up not being liable, and was not about to have to pay the lawyer out of my pocket, and managed to get the fee out of my ex.

But the whole thing took more than 2 years to straighten out, longer than we were married.

grrrrrrr.

whew, all better now.

yeah shewolf, check that out, way back then they met @ some school in east austin, you'll have to make some phone calls.

Personal loans and credit card debt is typically against one's name. If they don't get paid, then it goes on one's credit report. Not much of a worry to the deceased.

As the old saying goes, "death cancels all debts."

Except it doesn't, necessarily.

exactly.

In the case of my grandmothers death,
my mother became responsible for all bills.
Even the mail order bills.
Now, im sure there was more to the story then I am aware of ( she may have been her legal "guardian" in some sense) , but she ended up having to work through small bills , some almost 10 years old .. in a span of 2 years.

Odd, I was just pondering this question, shewolf. I realized that if I were to die today (morbid, I know) I would leave around 5,000 bucks of debt. I have a computer and a car which could be sold to cover that, but combined they might not cover it.

i dont think that is odd.
I think about that myself. I wonder who would become responsible for MY bills when i die..

i think everyone wonders about that some time or another.

Shewolf, I'm guessing your mother was a co-signer on your grandmother's accounts and was therefore responsible for her debts. You need to verify the law in Texas, but unless one's name is somehow on the account or asset, then they should not be responsible for the payment of the debt.

If something were to happen to your MIL then her house and other assets would be sold to cover her debts. Unless Mr Wolf is co-owner of the house, or has co-signed her loans, I don't believe he would be responsible for covering the losses. The same for your mother. Sometimes we encourage the elderly to have all accounts be joint accounts to try to circumvent probate but it isn't as simple as that.

My brother was put jointly on all of my mother's liquid accounts (checkbook, bank accounts, etc), my sister was co-owner of her house. Because they were co-owners we thought it would be a simple matter upon her death to distribute her assets - pay all the bills, distribute any remainder. Thinking we had circumvented the need to probate her estate we tried to sell her house. Two days before the scheduled closing we discovered because they co-owned, but it was not Joint Tenant with Right of Survivorship (JTROS) my sister only had the right to sell half the house and we did in fact need to probate her estate. The court deemed her will (which left everything equally to the four children) was invalid and determined all of her assets were to divided equally among all of her children (duh!). It all worked out, but each of us needed to sign the sale papers rather than just my sister.

If your aunt or your MIL die and someone comes after you or your mother to pay debts you have not signed for, contact Legal Aid immediately. I really don't think you would be liable.

Interesting..


so, basically, unless property is WILLED to someone, or they have co-signed on a loan/house/car/property etc.. the banks step in and sell what needs to be sold to cover debt?

that is comforting..
MILS house balance is easily in the 150's. We could never cover that.

Aunts bills .. are still unpaid of course.. and closing in on 50,000. I think my mom is lucky to MAKE that much money in a year.. there is no way she could absorb that amount of money