When my mother is gone who will be responsible for her debt?

One way to stop your Mom from getting new credit cards is to "freeze" her credit via the 3 large credit bureaus. It's pretty simple to do if you know enough about your Mom's credit history, and depending on what State your Mom lives in, the cost to freeze is $10 per credit bureau or no cost at all. Just go on-line, and click on "freeze credit" within the credit bureau's websites.

You are not responsible for her debt unless you had co-signed on the credit cards or any other type of financial document for loans, etc. But don't be surprised if credit collection companies start calling you and your siblings trying to get as much money as they can.

The money in her estate has to pay, you might be able to get them to reduce the bill. No one except a spouse would be legally responsible for the bills but they need to be resolved before the inheritances get paid.

I am sorry about your mom, and that you are having so many worries to deal with. Even if you are living with your mom, her debts are not your debts, unless you have joint cards or accounts. Her estate would be liable, so if she has any assets, like a house or bank accounts, her creditors may go after these assets.
I hope this helps a little bit to ease your mind.

Definitely utilize an attorney when she passes away. Some debts do not have to be paid and some do. The attorney will be knowledgeable about the difference, and will be able to facilitate compromises and forgiveness on some debts. Also, utilize an attorney to prepare POAs for both health care and for financial matter, making you the sole responsible person, in the event your mother becomes certified by Doctors that she does not have capacity to make responsible decisions in her behalf. Naturally, the POAs will name your siblings to become first and second successors in the event you personably become unable to serve.

Are you her POA ?

Have you talked with her about it? Save up evidence and bills not paid and talk w her a few times, to say this is a worry and you should hire a financial bookeeper now or a lawyer now - I understand someone with dementia will forget or argue, but there are often lucid times, or if you feel debts are already mounting, then you need to talk with her with the evidence maybe a few times, or hire someone to watch over her money at this stage. I've seen elders argue but accept limits when they are given to them by a financial estate manager - make the agreement that she is not competent - is one option, if the debts are just mounting and bills not paid - or if a bookkeeper would help her stay on track - she can meet with the bookkeeper every month, and go over all bills then. The best arrangements that I've seen, leave an amount in the person's checking account for spending money - maybe $500 - so that the elder is able to pay to have her hair done or some purchase, but move all other money elsewhere, like CDs or wherever. Plan the basic amount she can spend and have the agency deal with her with you then help keep her on track. Every situation is different, and she should have some discretion, but any large amounts stored safely elsewhere - and she may either agree, and it's worth the effort to help her see the value, many women of older generations are used to allowing men to plan for them, so having a male lawyer help draw up the plan or get her to agree, can help. Ask your local council on aging the names of a few legal or monetary agencies and see if you can find one that is certified or whatever, that you trust, it's worth the fees to pay for some help in this area, even if maybe starting with a bookkeeper who works directly with your mother may be all that is needed - try that first, for she may come to value the regular help.

Castle is so right when it comes to an elderly Mother only accepting advice from a male. My Mom [98] was that way.

I remember on the forum here where a Mom had giving her son financial POA but not the daughter. The son was clueless about handling money, and the daughter was a CPA. Go figure. But that is how some women though back decades ago.

Also one's parent still see their grown children as "kids" even though we could be senior citizens ourselves who had successful careers... but what do we know :P

One other thing I might add to all the good advice given here....if you are or get POA and pay her bills always put POA after your signature on checks. Also let anyone you deal with directly on her behalf know you have POA. That lets them know you are not responsible for her debt. You will be contacted by them after she passes but it will be for her estate to pay the debts. As a other's have stated it is wise to get counsel on which must be paid and which may be written off. As POA for my MIL I paid all her bills for two years. My husband was executor and he made sure ALL bills were paid before any inheritance was paid out to heirs of her estate. She had about $25,000 in credit card bills but thankfully she also had some annuities that once cashed covered all her debts. It did take about a year to settle everything but I kept in constant contact with the creditors and things went well.

You might also want to see if your mother has a family trust. It may be too late to do that now, but you do not have to go through probate if all your assets are in a family trust. Talk to an attorney about this. The trust will still be responsible for your mother's debts, but a trust will make managing the estate easier when she's gone.

Excellent advice from all our friends. I agree with each of them. #1 is freeze her credit. Maybe even take the credit card away?? Give her cash --an amount that is reasonable--each week. Explain how expensive using a credit card is..all the fees etc.I wish you the best. We are all in this together.

Bluesapphire,
My in-laws had a revocable trust and we still had to probate the will.....plus because the funeral home made an error on her death certificate and because the judge probating the will made a date-clerical error we had to have it re probated....
For everyone here check check and recheck all paperwork.

How is she getting around to spend her money? Don't take her shopping and don't help her with on line shopping. If you see her ordering stuff from TV, find it and send it back.

Usually when a person dies and leaves behind debt, it's usually the responsibility of the either the co-owner of the account or the deceased person's estate. It's not the responsibility of anyone else who's name is not on the account unless they choose to take responsibility and pay it off

I don't think it's legal to freeze or hide her credit. You better look into it before you do that.

"How some women thought back then..." Well, some whole families thought like that back then.

I have a female friend whose family had a very successful business. In their will, the parents left the successful business to the son and the summer house to the daughter. I guess they thought, like people did back then, that he needed to support his family and she would be supported by her husband.

Well, twenty or thirty years later, the brother's son is running the successful family business that has been rock solid all these years into the third generation, and my friend has a summer house that requires an annual tax payment of $20,000. She has never, ever had an income from the business but she has had to maintain the summer house for at least fifteen years.

Now, her husband has passed away, she is retired, and guess what? She doesn't have $20K each year to spend on property taxes. Who does???????

For me this is the perfect illustration of "how they thought back then..."

Be well!

Actually, if you gain the guardianship over this person, yes you can freeze their credit. You can have control of that along with their financial matters and even their social matters. Furthermore, you even have control of medical choices and what's best for the ward. Guardianship give you complete power and control over all matters of that person's life including their credit and financial matters

Very good advice, suggestions from everyone!
No, your elder's debts are not yours, and you are not responsible for your elder's debts, except in cases where State has assisted, by Welfare and Medicaid...they might require repayment [there are some circumstances they won't].
I know how terribly hard it is, too often, to stop an elder from spending everything they have in ways that make no sense...Our Mom blew off almost $240K, for useless things, many she couldn't remember she did, and claiming she gave large sums to those she never did.
Some siblings said "just let her spend it, she's lived without for so long, just let her enjoy blowing it"...!!!
Without all siblings working cohesively to achieve best care for Mom, NOTHING was able to get done to make anyone her DPOA, and she's still "in control" of her finances...which is very poor.
Adult kids have the hard task of determining when their parent is no longer responsible or accountable, and trying to get a DPOA and maybe other legal instruments set in place, if the elder never did, to make sure the elder is properly cared for.
UNfortunately, Mom will have to have at least 5 years of no income, to sign up for DSHS assistance of any kind [which she could sure use]; if welfare learns someone blew off a wad of money that could have been used on their care, welfare will make the elder wait for some years, before they will help...usually.
==Collect paper trail evidence of her failing to pay bills, and that she keeps collecting more credit cards.
==Write a 1-page note to her Doctor, about her behaviors which might lead to her being declared incompetent by the Doctor;
==Once that is done, an elder's children can sort out, with a lawyer, who is DPOA for what.
==Set up a very modest pocket-spending allowance, so she does not feel she is entirely cut off. Be prepared for that to be lost, stolen, or badly spent...it's for her. ==If she uses up her allowance, might want to think twice or more, about refilling that wallet or card, instead opting to pay for small things for her, such as small item purchases, hair care help, etc.
Will determined elders get angry? They sure do!
You are the adult now though.
You need to be responsible for them, if you can manage to set that up....sometimes, adult kids cannot do that, if the elder is too cantankerous.
Elders affected by any number of dementias, or other illnesses that can impair mental function, are effectively regressing into a child-like state, where money, planning, responsibility are things the elder no longer can do.
If the adult kids cannot set something up to protect their elder's resources, elders might do all kinds of weird things, including things which can result in self-injury or premature death.
You cannot tell them to stop doing those things; to them, things are "normal". You cannot "reason" with them, they are beyond reason.
When siblings refuse to work together, it might be that you can get a DPOA set up, to prevent her incurring more debt, and making sure her bills are paid.
As a last resort, if your siblings get in the way of your doing that, you might be able to contact APS, to ask for advice on how to get your Mom set up with a 3rd-party office which handles money for unfit elders. Because while someone else is not committing elder abuse using her funds, she is doing that to herself, at the risk of becoming a burden on the State help systems.
...That would mean, your siblings do not get to control things, any more than you do....which might help salvage any remaining shreds of family connections.
Sure hope you can get this sorted out!
In retrospect, I wish I'd called APS or Area Agency on Aging for that kind of information, instead of struggling with siblings who didn't want to be involved, didn't like what I was trying to set up, believed Mom's paranoid fictions, and ultimately, chose to do some very dysfunctional things instead...which also shattered any semblance of family relations that were left.

Why do you think you are responsible ? I do think you should get legal advice from a qualified elder attorney and discuss all the issues of caring for an out of control parent. Learn where you are responsible but also find out what could happen if you did make a payment for her or she put your name down as a contact on her credit applications. Find out what legal steps you can take to protect yourself and what legal steps you can take to protect your mother from herself. How is it you could cancel her existing cards? Do you already have POA? If you can't control her now how would you control her with guardianship? I'm sure it's very stressful dealing with this. Let us hear back from you.

Hi there, 97yroldmom.

Anytime someone spends uncontrollably if they happen to be incompetent, A guardian or even a rep payee can take over the person's finances. My foster dad obtained a court appointed guardian after developing dementia. A friend of mine would spend herself broke and probably not take care of her rent and other important bills if she didn't have a rep payee handling her money and paying her bills for her out of her money. She does get a weekly allowance for allowing her to eat out or go buy a few extras here and there. Taking over someone's finances stops them from spending too much if the right steps are taken by the money handler. Having a trustworthy person handle your money guarantees your most important bills will be paid and a savings will be established in the person would need emergency funds

Can someone explain further how a child without other legal authority can go online and put a credit freeze on a parent! Sounds questionable to me. I recall that my sisters and I were able to get a full credit report on Mom ) we paid for that but had to 'pretend' we were her when we were online. Later, we had a period when we were notified every time she reopened an account and had the POA at least, and so we were able to close those accounts more quickly. She just loved a wallet full of credit cards! She had good credit from prior years and because we had set up some autopays on her main cards. Her favorite were the department stores, Bachmann's, airlines, University, etc etc...all with benefits tempting to her sense of "frugality" or "discounts". She wanted to buy things to get "discounts" or "skymiles"....part of the loss of executive function as it developed.

Strictly from a legal standpoint, if she had no co-signer on her credit cards, then when she dies if there is an outstanding debt, the company must file a claim against her probate estate. If she does not have enough assets in her estate to pay all the creditors, they are out of luck (it's called a bankrupt estate). No other family members would be liable for her debts, since they are personal to her.

This isn't as simple as some of the folks answering this question believe. If you are entitled to any inheritance, then this debt will obviously need to be resolved first. Second, if she is on Medicaid then you can expect them to come after her assets when she passes away. You should speak with an attorney about your options if either of these scenarios represent your situation. In either case the attorney can create a trust that ensures your moms assets are protected. It should cost around $2000.00 and it's a very simple creation that does not require you use an expensive firm. You may pay more if you hire the firm to manage the trust. Otherwise you can select yourself as the manager. This option is free.

Did anyone notice the word dementia?
My mom was trying to win the publishers clearing house millions. She had a car load of junk by the time I figured it out. A lot of money disappeared, which she needed for her care later. Now I'm helping pay for her NEEDS.
By all means FREEZE HER ACCTS.

1Rare. I'm familiar with guardianship BUT OP may have exposure she isn't aware of. Her mom has been out of control for a long time evidently as her siblings wrote her off a long time ago and OP seems in a panic. IMO she may or may not want to be her moms guardian after considering all the responsibilities and the difficulty of managing her mom which I'm guessing extends far beyond finances. She needs legal advice and probably a therapist.

Having a loved one spending themselves broke can be enough to send the family into a panic. This can put the family into a position of having to shell out some money for the needs of the person who is spending themselves broke when they run out of money. Intervention is definitely needed in these cases because the rest of the family shouldn't have to go broke because of that one person. Though my foster dad developed dementia, he was still pretty good at making sure his bills were paid in full on time each month. When he put me on the bank account, I set his bills to come out automatically to save him the legwork so he had time for other things. Setting up auto bill pay for dad really made his life easier, and when he realized the bills were getting paid automatically, he was grateful. He did have a slight problem with going broke by the end of the month. Worse yet, he was living in a slum that was slowly falling down around him. I tried to help him to save money for a new apartment in a better place, and I even called around. The only thing I lacked was the vehicle and manpower to get him out of the slum and into the new place. I wanted better for dad but it took someone with the tools I didn't have to get him out of there. I could have landed him a very nice place, but I definitely needed help getting him to the new place. He was doing surprisingly well for a dementia patient despite some of the problems I noticed. Of course when you're not familiar with dementia, this can be very hard to spot and recognize. I'm sorry that he made no progress and now the nursing home has all of his money. This is a very sad way to live the rest of your golden years. I only wish I would've been able to do more than I really was able to. I guess this just wasn't a job for me but I did try. Dad won't have a chance to come and go as he pleases, nor will he ever have a chance to spend himself broke each month. He made far more than SSI recipients and he still spent himself broke when he was free but I never knew for the longest time everything that was going on, he was secretive. He just never shared everything.

Saving money requires self-discipline but it also requires a strategy. What works for one person may not work for the next, this is why it's good to come up with a strategy that works for you. Keeping track of where every dime goes is a very good start. Not falling for scams is another smart move. For a while I was also getting those mail offers and sweepstakes promising a chance to win if I became a customer. One of those was Ed McMan. Another mailing I recall is publishers clearing House.

To make a joke about publishers clearing House:

Oh yeah, they'll cause you to spend money til your broke. By time you're broke, you'll find yourself having to sell stuff to make back the money you lost while buying their stuff and trying to win millions. By time you find yourself selling stuff, you're actually Clearing your House right out now realizing the Publishers will never publish your name as a multi million dollar winner because that millions will never come.

Let it be an expensive lesson learned if you've already been there but kudos to those who outsmarted them and didn't spend a dime

My husband too had Parkinson's and frontal lobe changes which did not help his impulsive shopping. He managed to get a Amazon acct which I had no access to: think twenty harmonicas and he doesn't even play :). I did all I could to keep track of debt and debit charges but he would report his card lost and I would lose access to the acct.

Then on a whim he went to the lawyer to sign his POA and Will that I had finally convinced him to do, but at the last minute turned it all to his daughter who lives 1000 miles away. The house is also only in his name which he just refinanced a few months back.

He passed away last month and now they are going to "open the estate" which I guess is probate, despite having a will, and as far as I can tell, sell anything of worth that he has, (which in truth is mostly debt). As yet Im not homeless but time will tell with that. They will repo his car which is just in his name and I won't be accountable for his "debts" I am told, but am locked out of his checking accts as they weren't joint; I only had "permission" so I could keep track of monthly bills. It's a big mess. I hope you can find a lawyer to help you get control of things before they get out of hand.

You need the help of an Elder Care Attorney. Know your financial concerns, check with the County Bar Association for an attorney. It can be found at the courthouse. And yes there is a difference in attorneys area of practice. Should you not be able to find an attorney this way call your courthouse scheduling clerk, the is the person who can help with the connection for you. If all else fails you can go to this website for even more help, The legal and financial matters can be handled within that office without your having to worry. That is the short answer to your concerns. I also believe that your concerns regarding bills, siblings, how to handle major issues and more.

Please take this time to enjoy your mother. I am very aware of Parkinson’s disease and know the window to talk and remember will be less and less. Take time for yourself in the face of the emotional turmoil. You will never regret it. I also live on a fixed income and understand the trials of the situation. However, enjoying your memories with your mother will not cost anything but some time.

This may seem as though your questions are not being answered, but you may want to consider if the question you are asking is really the one you want the answer too. You will never get this time back with your mother. Cherish and enjoy this time, you may feel it means more to you than you think.

You are not responsible for a parents debts. Money from her estate will need to be used to pay bills. Like said, if no money the debtors will geet nothing. Insurance money goes to the beneficiary and doesn't have to be used for bills.

Does a debt go away when the debtor dies?

No. The estate of the deceased person owes the debt. If there isn't enough money in the estate to cover the debt, it typically goes unpaid. But there are exceptions to this rule. You may be responsible for the debt if you:

co-signed the obligation;
live in a community property state, such as California;
are the deceased person's spouse and state law requires you to pay a particular type of debt, like some health care expenses; or
were legally responsible for resolving the estate and didn't comply with certain state probate laws.

If you have questions about whether you are legally obligated to pay a deceased person's debts from your own assets, talk to a lawyer.