When a husband dies, is his wife responsible for his credit card debt?
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Anonymous
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Please forgive this unsentimental question during a difficult time, but my friend's husband has just entered hospice care. She knows he has about 20K in credit card debt, from travel, some medical bills not covered by insurance, and his general practice of paying only the bare minimum of the bill.
Is my friend responsible for his credit card debt after he dies? She lives in Maryland, if that's relevant. |
Anonymous
| Is she on the account? |
Anonymous
| If she’s not on the account probably not. But the estate will be. |
Anonymous
+1 and his estate will go to probate, and his debts get paid first before any inheritance gets paid out Did he have a will? If not, then in MD his wife will get half and his kids get the other half |
Anonymous
| TOD/POD, Trust. Leave nothing in an Estate. |
Anonymous
| I don't know the answer but when my married parent passed the cc debt went away. |
Anonymous
| His estate will be. So, if he has anything to pass along to her, she’d have to use that to pay the debt. However, if she calls the credit card company after he dies and says it’s a small estate, they might just write it off if her name isn’t in the account. |
Anonymous
Were there no assets? |
Anonymous
When my father passed we had to pay his debts before dispersing the $$ from his trusts. Can you imagine how great seniors would have it if no one ever had to pay in the end. Just ring up massve cc debt. I guess no one would ever issue a senior a card in that case, |
Anonymous
My MIL had almost no assets beside her house, car, and small checking account. She wanted to pay something toward an $8K FIL cc debt once modest life insurance came in. We told her to ask if she could clear it for half. That was easy to arrange. Her daughter said she shouldn't have paid anything. Her name wasn't on the card. But she wanted to make an ethical attempt to clear his debts. To big financial institutions, the recovery of funds is covered by the insane interest rates. From a tiny estate, recovering anything is difficult so any quick return of some money is pretty decent. There are also charities that retire medical debt. It would be better to address this with an original lender before debt collector companies get involved (that may or may not happen). |
Anonymous
There were. A trust and things not in the trust. |
Anonymous
Meant to add. The will itself didn't transfer anything except a tiny account. Perhaps the card was only in their name & not spouse's? I don't recall what I was told the mechanism was for erasing the debt. A sibling skilled in sketchy transactions handled it. |
Anonymous
Poorly written trust |
Anonymous
Um...no it wasn't. Revocable trusts do not provide creditor protection to the person that created the trust. See D.C Code Sec. 19-1305.05 and all the other states with similar provisions, I just know DC code section off the top of my head. A trust can provide creditor protection for successor beneficiaries of trust. |
Anonymous
Um… no. Proper estate planning avoids debt liability. Shouldn’t have been a revocable trust. |