How Community Property Law Affects the Credit Card Debt from a Deceased Spouse
Transcript:
Hi I'm Matt McArthur, attorney at Clear Counsel Law Group. I recently had an individual come into my office whose husband had recently passed away unfortunately. Her husband had acquired a substantial amount of credit card debt and the credit cards were only in his name and he didn't really leave any assets to his surviving wife. So the question that she had is because he has now died, is she responsible to repay his credit card debt even though the credit cards were only in his name?
Now to answer this question, we have to talk about which state we're living in and which state is applicable to this scenario. I'm going to be speaking as though we're operating within the jurisdiction of the state of Nevada. In the state of Nevada, we have what we call community property law. In a community property state, any assets generally speaking acquired during the course of a marriage are considered community property. What that means is each spouse owns or is entitled to 50% of the assets acquired. Unfortunately, the same thing applies to debt. There's such thing as community debt in community property states.
So even though the husband racked up credit card debt in his name only, from a legal standpoint, the credit card debts could pursue the community debt against the surviving spouse. Now it's very unlikely that credit cards will actually pursue this type of debt in this type of situation in my experience, if the surviving spouse was nowhere to be found on the account, the credit card company does not pursue collecting this debt against the surviving spouse. So what my recommendation would be would be to hold off on any type of settlement negotiations or a filing of bankruptcy until you're actually sure that the credit card companies are going to be trying to collect against you. It may be a little premature just knowing that these debts exist and proactively trying to take care of them because there's a pretty fair chance that the credit card companies will simply leave the surviving spouse alone.
If you have any questions about this, please come and see me, an experienced bankruptcy attorney who has a vast amount of experience dealing with these types of situations and I'll give you the best advice for your particular situation and help you get on the right path. Hope to hear from you soon.
