Watchmann wrote: To set the record straight, the $800 Visa bill was paid out of my father-in-laws checking account. (My wife is the trustee of his Trust arrangement.) I agree a third party doesn't have any responsibility to pay off someone elses debt. That was not the point of my original post in this thread. My point was this: If a person has legitimate debts upon his death, and his estate has the funds to pay those debts, then they should be paid, especially the relatively minor stuff like utility bills and credit cards. It seems some folks are saying as soon as someone dies the estate has no responsibility to pay the deceased debts and to just tell the debt holders to 'go to hell', or 'take me to court'. That's a slippery slope on the Moral Hazard route, which this country is well down the road on it seems.
Message Edited by Watchmann on 11-22-2008 12:28 PM
Actually, if your wife was Trustee of his estate, she had no choice but to pay it in order to facilitate the disbursement of the funds/estate to the beneficiaries. That's basic probate law.
However, paying it BEFORE the CCC demanded it was the right thing to do. But AFAIK, most people do that. We did on my FIL's estate (though I wasn't the Trustee, I helped), immediately after conveying the death certificate and notifying them of the probate.
But legally, if she hadn't paid them, she'd be in the deep doo-doo. The kind that gets you oodles of fines -- and possible jail time for fraud.
As re folks just refusing to use the estate to pay legitimate bills incurred by the decedent, that's illegal. And most probate courts (and laws) have mechanisms in place to prevent that.
Beneficiaries and Trustees can demand validation and proof of the debt (which can drag the process out by a few months -- and probate takes forever as it is), but refuse to pay without grounds? Nope.
We had to demand validation on my FIL's rent. The landlord decided to hit us up for rent that wasn't covered by the lease. The LL inflated the "move-out" costs by roughly $4K, despite the fact that since my FIL was ex-military and VERY organized and attentive to details, he'd "overpaid" the rent by 6 months to prevent his estate from being hounded by the LL. We'll say that the LL was VERY upset to find out that we knew about the "credited" rent paid. Bastige.
