[HN Gopher] America's Dead Souls
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America's Dead Souls
Author : ctoth
Score : 69 points
Date : 2021-05-18 04:44 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theparisreview.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theparisreview.org)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think it is important to raise awareness about Filial
| Responsibility Laws which hold children accountable for the debts
| of parents. More than half of US state have laws on the books
| which enable debt holders to go after assets outside of the
| deceased's estate.
|
| It is becoming increasingly common for nursing homes to bring
| suits against adult children of their residents.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws#Sta...
| [deleted]
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I don't understand how this is legal, let alone upheld by a
| state Supreme Court. How can I be legally responsible for my
| parents? How would the courts even find me if I don't live in
| the US anymore (the example case is the courts successfully
| suing a man who moved to Greece)?
|
| I am thankful to you for bringing this to my attention, but my
| WTF! meter is soaring.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| In the example you mention, it was the parent that went to
| Greece. It was a child living in the US that was forced to
| pay.
|
| It is actually worse than that. Many states also have
| criminal penalties allowing incarceration for financial
| neglect of parents.
| gumby wrote:
| > How can I be legally responsible for my parents?
|
| Well your parents are legally responsible for you for a
| period of time. There are many countries (I am most familiar
| with Germany in this regard) where the children are
| considered responsible for the parents. I was not aware this
| was the case in the USA.
|
| In some countries it's quite difficult / impossible to disown
| or disinherit various relatives.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| This is pretty damn scary. Are debtor's prisons about to make a
| comeback too?
| vkou wrote:
| Your post implies that they have ever went away. They
| haven't, there's just a large middle-class America that's
| largely insulated from the barbarism of its legal system.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Dude, that's basically what we have now. Bond, fines, court
| fees, lawyer fees, prison labor, etc. Even if you win, you
| still lose financially.
|
| Edit: I forgot a big one. The early intervention or
| accelerated rehabilitation programs cost tons of money, paid
| both to the system and to the vendors of ignition interlocks,
| ankle bracelets, etc. You really are paying to stay out of
| prison.
| wldcordeiro wrote:
| They never went away they just rewrote the rules so you go
| in for something else on paper.
| gabereiser wrote:
| We already have them. Inmates in most US jails and prisons
| are charged a per diem just for being there. It's
| disgraceful.
| Aperocky wrote:
| So.. what if they don't pay?
| notac wrote:
| often you're billed after release, can take it from any
| pay you make when you're out, etc. It's pretty evil.
| tyoma wrote:
| Creditors can only go after the assets of the estate. One does
| not inherit debts.
|
| In this case the State likely got the house to pay back Medicaid
| via "Medicaid Recovery".
| giantg2 wrote:
| Fillial responsibility laws exist in about half of the US. I
| believe only some types of debts can be passed on (like nursing
| home costs), but it varies by state.
| divbzero wrote:
| I was curious and found this Wikipedia article [1] providing
| the list of states with filial responsibility laws.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws
| giantg2 wrote:
| One thing to point out is that those states are where the
| impoverished person must reside. The relative can reside
| anywhere and the state (depends on the one) can sue you or
| issue a warrant even if you live in another state.
| moshmosh wrote:
| > Creditors can only go after the assets of the estate. One
| does not inherit debts.
|
| They sometimes do go after the family, hoping to trick them
| into paying. I'm sure they get a lot of folks to pay, too.
| jlokier wrote:
| > hoping to trick them into paying.
|
| That sounds like fraud. Can the families not sue afterwards
| to get the money they paid back, with damages, on the grounds
| they were victims of fraud?
| moshmosh wrote:
| I'd assume that, as long as they're careful about how they
| pressure you, it's not fraud if you decide to pay. AFAIK
| they're under no obligation to _volunteer_ that you don 't
| have to pay them anything, or to otherwise educate you
| about the fact that they're (in fact) just begging for
| money they're not owed, and hoping you'll give it to them.
| But if they ask you (the aggrieved, in the middle of
| hosting family and trying to plan a funeral and figuring
| out how to pay all the bills you actually _do_ need to, as
| a result of all this) to _accept_ this debt and you say you
| do, and then they help you work out a very _convenient and
| gracious_ payment plan for this debt you unthinkingly
| accepted because you 're not a damn lawyer and you're kinda
| stressed out and debt collectors are scary and now it's on
| auto-draft for the next 18 months, well, that's above-
| board.
|
| I've known people who've been on the receiving end of those
| calls, so they definitely happen, and must be profitable,
| one way or another.
| shkkmo wrote:
| If it isn't fraud, it should be. The lack of liability or
| any requirements for due diligence for debt collectors is
| a utter travesty that primarily harms the most vulnerable
| and underrepresented people in our society.
| hi41 wrote:
| I am shocked to see the debt fall on the descendant. Is this
| legal? If a parent commits a murder the legal system does not
| blame the descendant. How is it legal for debt be passed to
| descendants?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Literally anything can be made legal. The people who want the
| money can lobby legislators until they get a law they want
| passed. Nothing stops it. Lobbying is legal, and lawmakers can
| make any law they want. They can even make a law that allows
| corporations to abuse people (which is weird since corporations
| are people, but we don't generally allow people to abuse
| people)
| mavelikara wrote:
| Thanks for writing this. Many times when people ask "Is it
| legal?" they miss this nuance. What they often mean instead
| is "Is it moral?" It is a great accomplishment of the
| political class to have manufactured this ambiguity.
| masklinn wrote:
| Afaik if you accept the inheritance, you accept all of it.
| Normally the solution is to reject it, at least if you know the
| estate's in the red, but you can not pick and choose.
|
| We've done this for the inheritance of one of my uncles who
| died severely in debt, as well as his wife and children,
| everyone of his sibling, nieces, and nephews, had to refuse the
| inheritance when they came of age. For a few years that was
| basically the traditional birthday: eat cakes, get presents,
| sign letter telling the bank you don't want that debt.
|
| And apparently some states have filial responsibility statutes
| which makes children responsible regardless, which seems beyond
| fucked.
| divbzero wrote:
| Beyond refusing the inheritance, could this be avoided by
| leaving the inheritance to the state in a will? In that case,
| would the state inherit the debt?
| moshmosh wrote:
| If this happens to you:
|
| 1) The creditors are full of shit. Don't accept the estate, don't
| acknowledge that you owe any debt, and you don't owe them a damn
| thing. If no-one accepts it, they're simply screwed. They'll try
| to trick you into paying anyway, because they are, in fact,
| monsters, but they're full of shit.
|
| 2) Look up (online) the correct magic words to tell the creditors
| to go fuck themselves, or else face charges. They'll stop. On the
| off chance they don't, a call of complaint to your
| representative(s) or to the correct state agency will do the
| trick.
| ashleyn wrote:
| One notable, and very underreported exception, is
| Pennsylvania's filial responsibility law[1]. In Pennsylvania,
| if a resident of a nursing home is indigent, the liability
| falls statutorily on their family, who the home is free to sue
| and secure a judgement. This may not have gotten much attention
| due to uncommon use, but it's very real, and it's been upheld
| by the PA State Supreme Court. A handful of children of seniors
| have been bankrupted by filial responsibility judgements.
|
| [1]: https://www.paelderlaw.net/pennsylvanias-filial-support-
| law-...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Actually, I dont think PA is an exception here. Most states
| have similar laws on the books.
| codemac wrote:
| https://www.robertreeveslaw.com/blog/children-support-
| parent...
|
| The interesting part is how they're not applied. There are
| federal statutes that are more specific - and only two
| states have used these laws within the last 20 years.
|
| There are only extreme corner cases where you need to worry
| about this.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| No one needs to worry, until money gets tight. Then it's
| every man for himself, and the government will go after
| you. Or they will stiff the nursing home, and then let
| the nursing home go after you, like the what happened to
| the guy in Pennsylvania.
|
| With the government budget situation in many places, and
| large amounts of people about to become elderly and rack
| up bills, I would consider it more than a remote
| possibility in the future.
| moshmosh wrote:
| Yes, in fact the details vary some depending on which state
| you're in and how you're related to the deceased. _In
| general_ , though, I'd treat unsolicited calls attempting to
| get you, personally, to pay for a dead relative's debts, as
| bullshit until you're 100% sure they're not. Most (all?)
| state governments have FAQs for this sort of thing online,
| and the federal government also offers guidance (all
| trivially Googleable).
| cowanon22 wrote:
| Personally, I would hire a lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction
| and specialty. Laws are complicated, and collections and court
| cases are very expensive if you happen to be wrong. The lawyer
| can help you reduce the amount if you happen to be responsible
| for part of it. The "magic words" will have much more power if
| they come from an practicing attorney.
| jandrese wrote:
| I wish I'd been more aggressive about this when my mother in
| law died. She left behind a house, but also a half a million
| dollars worth of medical debt from a decade of chronic illness
| that eventually took her life. We thought "fine, we'll let the
| creditors fight over the house and be done with it", but they
| refused. They told us it was our responsibility to sell the
| house at at least market rate--which was hard because it had
| several decades of deferred maintenance. They would only take
| cash and refused to do any work for it beyond making
| threatening phone calls about garnishing our wages if we didn't
| get it done in time.
|
| Since it was the state Medicaid office harassing us I really
| didn't want to get in a legal fight so we did all of the work
| of selling the house. Our lawyer did at least manage to get our
| costs taken out of the closing fees so we weren't out of pocket
| except for the time and effort and miles since we live in a
| different state. All in all I can't recommend having a loved
| one die.
|
| The worst part is back when my mother in law got sick my wife
| convinced her to write us out of her will because we were told
| that the state would get the home anyway after her medical
| bills piled up. What she didn't tell us is that she just
| changed her will to name her church as the beneficiary. Once we
| read the will it became yet another mess to clean up. It should
| have been easy enough, we talked with the pastor and convinced
| him to refuse the estate easily enough. Unfortunately the
| church board overrode him (I think they believed we were trying
| to pull a fast one), and then found themselves in a fight with
| the state over a house they also had no intention of putting
| the effort into selling and also a huge medical debt. It was
| very tempting to just drop the thing and walk away at that
| point, but it was clear the problem would never be resolved and
| it would almost certainly come back to haunt us in the end. We
| had to do the work because nobody else was going to. I never
| did get a clear answer from the Medicaid debt collectors why
| they couldn't just put the estate up on a government auction. I
| think it would have required them to do some work and they
| really just didn't want to.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Yeah this article is a bit dramatic. As evil as the rich people
| who try to recover debts may be, children are not legally
| responsible for their parent's debts.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Except when they are! https://www.paelderlaw.com/asset-
| protection-medicaid/supreme...
| ptudan wrote:
| That is so ridiculous. You can be born into this world
| without your decision or input. Your parents made that
| choice. Your parents can also choose to kick you out right
| at 18, after fulfilling their legal obligation.
|
| Then, down the line, you can be held responsible for
| potentially even more than 18 years of more expensive care?
| Absolutely unfair.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I read a book that had a quote: "'Fair'
| is the first half of 'Fairy Tale,' and you won't find
| either in the real world."
| uglygoblin wrote:
| Real life can be very dramatic and it doesn't make it less
| true to the people involved. Many people don't know to
| question the debtors, get overwhelmed, get bullied, and don't
| have the energy or resources to fight the onslaught of
| aggressive communications and serious looking mail they
| receive from these predators.
| acabal wrote:
| If you want to read _Dead Souls_ , there's a free high quality
| edition at Standard Ebooks:
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/nikolai-gogol/dead-souls/d...
|
| It's a surprisingly funny and brisk read.
| burmer wrote:
| A big part of the jokes I seemingly missed reading it in
| English, according to a friend of mine who read it in Russian,
| is that some of the landowners and other characters' names are
| untranslated puns.
| defen wrote:
| I enjoyed it but I also felt that there was too much of a
| culture gap (or simply my own lack of knowledge of 19th century
| Russia) for me to fully appreciate everything that was going
| on.
| unhammer wrote:
| I remember laughing out loud at some description of how one may
| refer to a smelly cheese in polite society, but I can't find
| anything about cheese at all in the English translation. Maybe
| the Norwegian translator made up a joke more palatable to
| Norwegians =D
| keiferski wrote:
| Gogol is the master of witty short stories. I also recommend
| _Diary of a Madman_ , in which a mediocre civil servant begins
| to imagine he is the King of Spain.
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36238/36238-h/36238-h.htm#Pa...
| acabal wrote:
| That's a great one! Also available at SE as "Memoirs of a
| Madman": https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/nikolai-
| gogol/short-fictio...
| reader_x wrote:
| This is breathtakingly well-written and also terrifying.
|
| Unfortunately this is but one version: it's also not uncommon for
| children and grandchildren to milk their elders dry financially,
| particularly when the elders are a bit addled. If those elders
| leave unpaid bills to a nursing home, why shouldn't those
| children be held responsible? It's rough out there.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| Making nursing homes out to be the victims here is a real
| laugh. If anybody is milking anybody dry, it's nursing homes
| sucking up every last dollar the elderly have. Hundreds of
| thousands of dollars regularly spent to prolong suffering a few
| months more.
|
| This reminds me, I need to get a living will written up to
| prevent this bullshit from happening to me.
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