My son is the only child of his deceased father. There was no will. There is a 1st and a personal 2nd loan on the home property. The mortagage company has given us the option to give back the property to satisfy the loan on the 1st. Now my question is my son liable for the 45,000.00 owed on the 2nd if he has not been named legal heir by the courts? He is the only child,but does that make him responsible for his fathers debts? We were told my son couldn't rent ,sale or do anything with the home until he was named legal heir by the court.. We will not be going through Probate.

If the second loan was secured by the property, then, by accepting the property as his inheritance, he would become responsible. If it wasn't secured by the property, then no he wouldn't be responsible.

You can't inherit debt. He may lose the house to the creditors, but he won't get stuck with the balance.

If there is a first and second, you can't just give it back to the first mortgage holder, without dealing with the second mortgage,

Normally he is not going to "inherit" any of this, but will leave it in probate, and sell the property if possible, or allow it to be foreclosed.

He will need to be the over the estate to manage this, Since he does not know this, he needs an attorney to do this, so he does not do something stupid and end up oweing anything.

But no when done properly, the estate is sold, debts paid, and if there are debts left, they just remain unpaid and the people notified they are dead and that there is no longer money left.

But if he does it wrong, these people will give you poor advcie trying to obligate you to paying them.

This is a probate question, not family law...