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I am the surviving elderly parent, age 74, whose daughter, age 52, recently died of lung cancer. She lift no will, but piles of debts. Are we, her parents or her married children, liable for the mountains of debts she left? Your article relates to children of elderly. She was not elderly but certainly did leave a pile of debts and we are worried about who will pay them.
Let me begin by saying again that I am not an attorney, and I don't play one on TV. However, I can feel pretty confident in saying that neither you nor your daughter's children are personally responsible for her debts if she was not your dependent or your spouse, and if none of you signed anything obligating yourselves. Without a will her estate will most probably have to pass through a Probate Court, and the Court will give instructions about how her bills are to be paid from whatever assets she left. There are rules to be followed in this kind of situation about who is paid first, who is paid second, and so on. Her bills must be paid before any distribution to heirs. Of course, if there are no assets, then there is no money to pay anyone. Fortunately, our system doesn't pass financial obligations on to other members of the family, with the exception of spouses, minor children, and adult dependents. And thank goodness, or where would it end? We would have second-cousins twice removed suddenly responsible for debts of relatives they hardly knew.
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