I posted this on /r/legaladvice and people asked me to post here.
Location: Las Vegas, NV
I'm really overwhelmed right now and I don't even know where to begin. Google searching isn't helping at all.
My father passed away suddenly and he left his taxable brokerage account to me via a transfer on death policy. I presented the death certificate to the brokerage and took control of it a while ago. It took some time to go through the account and learn about stocks. A week after possessing the account it went negative $75k (from positive 50k~.) and the brokerage liquidated everything. The broker issued a margin call on the account. I had no idea at the time why this happened but doing some research it seems like my dad "short selled" some call options "naked" according to the broker. I think it means he was betting that a stock would go down but it went up instead and he risked unlimited losses.
The broker is demanding payment from me. This is really really crippling as I can't just come up with $75k and I don't know how it is possible to inherit debt. The broker told me I was responsible the day I did the transfer of death and should have known and managed the positions before doing so. To me it's really ridiculous that there could be these lurking time bombs. Do they have any legal responsibility to close out risky positions such as that?
I don't know what to do or who to turn to. Is it possible to get back the $50k and not have a debt? If not, is it possible to turn it back over to his estate so I'm not on the hook for a huge bill?
Submitted June 18, 2017 at 03:38AM by inheriteddebt http://ift.tt/2rJfOsH
