When you die with debt your debt doesn’t vanish, but none of your relatives can be held responsible for your personal debt. instead what happens is all your property is transfered to your estate, and your estate heads off to probate. There all creditors you had when you died make claims against the estate for the value of the debt you owed them AT the time of your death. So, the Citibank credit card call is probably false for any number of reasons. Citibank would not be allowed to assess further debt after the time of death, and were any debt owed to Citibank they would have pursued the estate. Citibank wouldn’t want to jeopardize their case in probate by tacking on illegal charges, lest they face the wrath of a short-tempered judge.

Now, if you rack up a whole bunch of debt in your final months because you think “hey, they can’t come after me when I’m dead,” guess again. If you go out and buy a large amount of material goods on your credit card, then kick the bucket, the credit card company has a right to collect the material goods to recoup the losses. If you rack up the debt in services (can’t say I wouldn’t mind a few trips to the Bunny Ranch if I were 80 and dying of bowel cancer) what will happen is they will dip into your cash on hand when you died, and if that is insufficient they will sell your material property to raise cash to cover the debt. Ever hear of an estate sale?

Now, suppose your just flat out die with no assets to speak of. In that case your creditors eat it. This is where someone commenting here hit on a nugget of truth. Anyone involved in the debt industry has the same mentality, basically that they think the heirs should assume the debt. Legally they can’t ask that of you, but of course reality and people’s opinions have always had a real wide difference between one another. I actually ended up in a conversation with someone who had this sort of mindset. He flat out asked me “If your grandfather died owing someone money, wouldn’t you feel obligated to pay him back?” The notion that people wouldn’t be beholden to their ancestor’s debts was totally alien to him.

There is one notable addendum to this that should be mentioned. In the case of any joint account where one party racks up debt and dies, the living member or members of that account will still be accountable for any debt accrued under that account. Be careful who you put your name on an account with.

but funny they don’t thinking as real situation if dead person cannot deal with real life.

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