Interesting credit card issue for deceased family member

[disneysteve]

My wife's sister died back in February. My wife was not the executor or personal representative. She had/has absolutely no connection to or responsibility for her late sister's affairs.

A couple of months ago, she received a letter from a collection agency trying to get money for an outstanding credit card balance. We responded in writing explaining that my wife is not responsible for that account.

Today, we received a packet from Discover addressed to the sister with our address. It was reprints of her monthly statements from mid 2018 to mid 2019. It said they were sent as requested.

We certainly didn't request them (and have no legal right to possess them). We have no idea how Discover associated our address with her sister's account. I called customer service and spoke to the deceased account department. She had no idea why we got them either but the specialist she needs to speak to leaves at 5 so she will follow up on it tomorrow.

I don't know if we'll hear back or not. I don't really care either way as long as we don't suddenly start getting a bunch of mail in the sister's name to our address now that the link has been made. We haven't heard back from the lawyer/collection agency after a 2nd letter so I don't know if they gave up or not.

[QuarterMillionMan]

An uncle had died with numerous debts and we got all sorts of collection mail and calls. My mom who is the sister of that uncle had me assisting writing letters and making calls that we were not responsible nor were not executors nor successor trustees. We paid for an ad in the newspaper public notice of the death which may or may not be a legal matter taking care of any obligations but it seemed to help curtail all the collection agencies from being so aggressive.

[disneysteve]

An uncle had died with numerous debts and we got all sorts of collection mail and calls. My mom who is the sister of that uncle had me assisting writing letters and making calls that we were not responsible nor were not executors nor successor trustees. We paid for an ad in the newspaper public notice of the death which may or may not be a legal matter taking care of any obligations but it seemed to help curtail all the collection agencies from being so aggressive.

When my cousin died and I was the executor doing a public notice was part of the probate process. Nothing could happen with the estate until 90 days after that got posted.

There was no probate for my sister-in-law and she had no estate or assets. She was broke and in debt.

[QuarterMillionMan]

My uncle was the same in deep debts and had inherited his father's home in Hawaii and had taken out 5 re-fi's against the house in order to live a jet setting lifestyle travelling the world. Prior to his death I didn't know he had all that debt and I used to think highly of him because he'd send my money at Christmas. If I knew he was such in debt I would have rather that he paid off his debts instead of sending me money. After discovering how much debt he had I no longer thought highly of him. My mom had to use some of her money to pay for his funeral. I remember following up with his employer asking about a small life insurance policy thru his work for $10,000 that eventually got paid but we needed to use it for his funeral. Sad how people get so far in debt that even upon death the living are left scrambling to figure out how to pay for their funeral, etc. But on the other side of the pendulum sometimes I think to myself that he was smart not leaving any money behind and racked up huge debts not having to pay it off. Go figure, lol.

[Drake3287]

Yep, I've had similar issues. I my case I have an adult, dirt bag brother who's been a financial disaster for his entire life. Even though we have no connection other than being brothers, I've had many phone calls over the years looking for both him and money owed them. These companies have a wealth of ways in finding relative's who might offer a glimmer of hope to them. I guess even if 1% of people help them it's still a positive investment of their time and energy. Sort of a shot gun approach to being paid back.

[bjl584]

Years ago I installed a home phone at my old house. It was a result of one of those package deals through my then cable provider. It was cheaper to get their bundle package.
Anyway, I plugged in the phone that I had just bought and within 2 minutes it started ringing. I was a bit freaked out. Who could possibly be calling me? I just set up the account the day before, and I hadn't given anyone the number.
Turns out it was a collection agency looking for whoever used to have that phone number. It took months to convince all the creditors that I wasn't the person that they were looking for and that I had no idea where they could find him.

They were definitely aggressive at trying to get their money.

[disneysteve]

Yep, I've had similar issues. I my case I have an adult, dirt bag brother who's been a financial disaster for his entire life. Even though we have no connection other than being brothers, I've had many phone calls over the years looking for both him and money owed them. These companies have a wealth of ways in finding relative's who might offer a glimmer of hope to them. I guess even if 1% of people help them it's still a positive investment of their time and energy. Sort of a shot gun approach to being paid back.

I wasn't terribly surprised by the lawyer collection letter as that was addressed to my wife. What surprised me about this was that it actually came from Discover and contained copies of a year's worth of statements and it was addressed to her sister at our address. Discover really screwed up here as that's a huge privacy breach in my opinion. How could they send out that info like that. And how did they get our address associated with the sister's account? I'm wondering if the lawyer had something to do with it. Maybe the lawyer contacted Discover and had them send us the statements to prove the debt. Of course, I have no doubt that she owed the money. It just has nothing at all to do with my wife.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Speaking to bj's point, since 2003 to present day, I keep getting once in a while phone calls asking for Pat Butterfield from what must be a collection agency. I ask them to please remove my phone number from their list which they are polite and agree to do so but I keep getting those calls so I just live with it.

[ua_guy]

That is a weird thing to receive - the past statements. I hope Discover follows up and is able to identify how they came to be generated and sent to you.

The other stories in the thread are about a practice called "skip tracing". Debt collection agencies aggregate data about the debtor including possible relatives, friends, addresses, and workplaces in order to try to make contact. I always hate being assigned a new phone number for anything. Typically it comes with a lot of calls for someone who had that number and owes someone money!

[QuarterMillionMan]

The logarithms of Microsoft is so effective this article conveniently showed up in my feeds;
What happens to credit-card debt after you die? Will my mother’s IRA be used to pay off her personal loans? (msn.com)

[myrdale]

It is your estates's duty to pay your debts when you die.

Making up numbers:

If her sister owned a home, say $250,000 which was sold, and had some amount in savings and retirements, again say $50,000 and owed say $20,000 in credit card debt, then that money "should" have been paid before splitting the remaining among her heirs.

Left field I know, but I got to ask: Did your wife co-signed on the credit card with her?

At most I would point the collection agency towards the executor of the will and leave it at that.

[disneysteve]

It is your estates's duty to pay your debts when you die.

Making up numbers:

If her sister owned a home, say $250,000 which was sold, and had some amount in savings and retirements, again say $50,000 and owed say $20,000 in credit card debt, then that money "should" have been paid before splitting the remaining among her heirs.

Left field I know, but I got to ask: Did your wife co-signed on the credit card with her?

At most I would point the collection agency towards the executor of the will and leave it at that.

No estate. No assets. No executor. No heirs. Not co-signed.

[ua_guy]

No estate. No assets. No executor. No heirs. Not co-signed.

Any follow-up from Discover yet?

[disneysteve]

Any follow-up from Discover yet?

No. I don’t expect to hear from them. I’ll probably hear from the collection agency again but we’ll just ignore that. I already responded to them twice.

[myrdale]

No. I don’t expect to hear from them. I’ll probably hear from the collection agency again but we’ll just ignore that. I already responded to them twice.

Since she had no assets, then absolutely the debt dies with her.

For the collection agency, you have to remember these people are the bottom of the barrel. They most likely purchased the debt for pennies on the dollar. Sooner or later they will come across someone who feels some misplaced responsibility for a deceased relatives debt, and then BINGO they've made a $10,000 profit on a $100 investment.

Dave Ramsey has done hundreds of calls discussing people who had the collection agencies coming after them abusively, and had discussed the fair debt collection practices act in response to them. I seem to remember a few calls also for your situation where it is the relative getting the calls. It's too far back for me to find the videos of with out digging deep.

I suspect at this point, you will need to send them a certified letter telling them to quit. And if they don't you might just have a decent law suit on your hands with a nice pay out when you sue the pants off of them!