How long have you been Cleverbot?
Again, IANAL, and this only goes for Pennsylvania, but the IRA might not be part of the estate if it’s a beneficiary IRA with a named beneficiary. The money would go to the named beneficiary and not the estate.
Really? Can you provide more details on this? It seems odd to me that credit card companies would agree that the debt dies with the debtor. As I posted earlier, the usual rule is that the deceased’s debts survive and are payable by the estate.
See, here’s the problem. “Take advantage of the system…”
When the punitive modifcations to bankruptcy law were passed several years ago, the credit card companies sold it to congress (with millions in donations) that “OMG, there are millions of people who deliberately get as many cards as they can, run them up to max with no intention to pay, then file for bankruptcy. Once their debts are cleared, they do it again, over and over!!! A Law Must Be Passed!!!”
In fact, most credit problems with credit cards are exactly because of the same problem as OP - sickness, unemployment, and the high cost of living in America mean that people who think their job will go on forever, or that they will find a new one shortly, suddenly find themselves without income and a steadily accumulating debt. It is not a mercenary thing they do. Yes, we can point to poor planning and bad grasp of money management - but then, who among us besides Suzy Ormand actually has 6 months pay stashed away in ready cash?
In fact, one study mentioned on CNN a few years ago after the bankrupt laws changed found that over half the bankruptcies were due to sickness and related medical costs (…he said smugly from Canada).
So I suspect your moral indignation stems from a misguided notion that people are “doing it on purpose”. I bet when your body is falling apart, and you ned more and more expensive pharmaceuticals to even keep breathing or stop throwing up, your thoughts probably don’t revolve around “He,he, I can charge my drugs and my groceries to the credit card and stick Citibank with the bill…Yipee!”
IANAL, so this may be nonsense, but worth checking out. When my wife’s stepfather died in NJ and she inherited 1/7 of the the estate, one of the heirs (not a person) dithered for over a year on whether to accept its 1/7 share. It was explained to me that any beneficiary who accepts (that is does not renounce) the bequest is responsible for any debts. I don’t know the details, maybe only up to the fraction of the estate inherited. Thus if some outstanding debt suddenly comes to light, even if larger than the estate, then all the beneficiaries who have not renounced their bequest become liable.
It sounds odd to me, but is just the sort of quirk that can be hidden in common law. Also, there’s gotta be a statute of limitations. If, as here, there is no estate, then I don’t see how the wife can be held accountable. I guess, if as suggested above, they can show she benefited from the debt, then maybe. As I said, IANAL.
Unlikely. See - http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-debt-death-1282.php Says that except for the communal property states, it dies with the cardee, and there is a statute of limitations to come forward with any debt. (And interest stops accumulating) New Jersey is not one of the communal property states. Follow the links to learn a bit more (not much) about communal property.
From what I’ve heard, an estate has to be wrapped up; you cannot have bills popping up two, four, or 10 years later. So, like bankruptcy, there is a cut-off by which time bills/claims must be presented - speak now or forever hold your peace. If NJ has an exception, I’d be curious to hear about it.
Actually, that’s precisely why here in Ontario you can seize a debtor’s bank account, but you cannot seize a debtor’s insurance policy or investment account that was made through an insurance company, provided that the policy or account had a designated beneficiary. The government would much rather that creditors suck eggs than the surviving family draw upon the government’s social support system. Th’ gub’mnt thunked o’ th’ chitlins when id made our Insurance Act.
When my father died, his company has a lot of debts. Most of it was secured by machines and property so they all got paid off but at the end of the day there were two unsecured debts that could not be satisfied from the corporate assets. One was a bank loan from a bank he had done business with since I was a child. The other was from a security company that installed cameras at his factory, the contract had 8 years left on it and they wanted 8 years of payments PLUS a termination fee. I told them to go suck it.
In a just world, lying in an attempt to collect a debt would result in the debt being reversed (i.e. the lying creditor would now owe that amount to the person they tried to defraud, instead of vice versa).
“Borderline”, nothing. In the scenario described, the entity would be uttering a false assertion, would know (or should have known) that the assertion was false, and would be attempting to gain financially through the falsehood. That’s pretty much a textbook definition of fraud (not “borderline” fraud).
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What “debt incurred”? If the terms of the contract indicate that there is no debt in situation X, and situation X does in fact transpire, then the debt simply does not exist.
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The OP implicitly indicates (“The lawyer handling the will told her that the debts would be discharged and she was not responsible for them.”) that the credit card contract in question did not, in fact, allow the debt to survive the debtor.
And, as noted several times in this thread, if the attempt includes the utterance of a false assertion, it is also legally wrong, being an attempt at deception for financial gain (i.e. fraud).