When someone dies with heavy credit card debt, who has to pay for it
When my father died in 2013 he left behind sustantial credit card debt. Most of the debt was at least four or five years old by that point. They had no assets other than a Hyundai. They had already lost the house to foreclosure and had sold most of their possessions to maintain food, heat, water and power.
Unfortunately, my husband and I did not make enough money to afford to bail them out of their debt and they didn’t want us to. We also couldn’t have them live with us because my father had sexually abused both my sister and I for over a decade and I had a young daughter and could not trust him not to do the same to her.
After they both had died, we had a couple phone calls from collectors demanding we pay their credit card debt. I told them to eff off as it was not my debt and they knew it. They never called again.
If the estate is insolvent and there are no assets, then the credit cards are not paid by anyone. If relatives choose to pay those debts for some reason, then they are free to do so, but any creditor who tells you that you are responsible for a deceased relatives debts on credit cards you were not a signer for and had no part of, is a bald-faced liar.
Why were my parents in debt for tens of thousands of dollars?
Because my mom had a stroke and spent several weeks in the hospital after major brain surgery to mitigate/repair the damage from a nearly fatal stroke ten years before. My dad had tried to keep up with the bills and pay the hospital bills, but after his own series of mini-strokes he was unable to work any longer, so he remortgaged their nearly paid off house to pay the medical bills. He held off on taking social security for quite a while thinking that if he filed too early he’d get reduced benefits (he was 60 when my mom had her stroke) for the rest of his life. When he finally filed after having no choice, it wasn’t enough to pay off any of the debt and afford food, housing and utilities every month.
Universal health care would have prevented all of that from happening as my mom’s high blood pressure would have been discovered long before it caused her stroke.
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