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August 24, 2011

Some banks and credit card companies try to take advantage of the grieving period when a spouse is lost. Sometimes after a wife or husband passes away, the credit card company will call the surviving partner demanding that he or she pay the debt that the deceased had incurred individually.

"After someone dies, any money owed to creditors comes out of the deceased person’s estate, writes lawyer Michael Helfand. "This means that the assets that were owned by the deceased are used to pay off his or her debts. In the case of spouses, there can be debt that was incurred by one individually, or in the name of both jointly. If a credit card account was opened by both spouses jointly, then the surviving spouse would still be responsible for that debt, regardless of who made the purchases."

If a spouse does not sign on an account and therefore it is not a joint account, then the deceased's estate is responsible for paying off the debt.

The spouse does not have to pay off the debt.

To summarize: The spouse is not responsible for the deceased's individual accounts, the deceased's estate is. Any joint accounts are automatically taken over by the surviving spouse.

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