My mother is an Oregon resident. My dad, who has died, had many credit cards in his name only that mom did not know about. Is she legally responsible for his debt? Her name is not on any of the accounts. There is no estate and no money to pay the debt. Can the creditors legally hound my mother by constantly calling her? How does she handle this situation?

Estate ? Was there a car owned jointly, a home, any joint bank accounts

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Originally Posted by chekirdav

My mother is an Oregon resident. My dad, who has died, had many credit cards in his name only that mom did not know about. Is she legally responsible for his debt? Her name is not on any of the accounts. There is no estate and no money to pay the debt. Can the creditors legally hound my mother by constantly calling her? How does she handle this situation?

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If your father owned no property, not individually, not joint, and there is no estate, then your mother so advises the creditors.

As Frchuck said, anything held in his name or held jointly can be liened to pay these debts.

Has the estate been probated?

I'm not sure if this applies to a death, but according to this site (Divorce Source: Oregon Divorce & Separation scroll down to Dividing Marital Debts) debts incurred during a marriage ARE marital debts and therefore mom may be responsible for them. I suggest contacting an estate attorney in OR to confirm this.

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

I'm not sure if this applies to a death, but according to this site (Divorce Source: Oregon Divorce & Separation scroll down to Dividing Marital Debts) debts incurred during a marriage ARE marital debts and therefore mom may be responsible for them. I suggest contacting an estate attorney in OR to confirm this.

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I'll be interested in what an Attorney says because I found a site and have posted before that Oregon is not a community property state, therefore the surviving spouse would only be liable for debts that were jointly incurred during the marriage. Property held as TBE passes directly to the surviving spouse and cannot be attached when only one spouse is the debtor.

I suspect that debts incurred during a marriage for purposes of divorce and property distribution are different from debts incurred during a marriage which ends in death.

Yes I saw that Oregon was not a community property state and so I was surprised to find that info about Divorce. But I couldn't find anything else specifically on point.