Good article from ABC on handling parents' assets and debts after they pass. An excerpt:
Blogger John Schmoll's father left a financial mess when he died: a house that was worth far less than the mortgage, credit card bills in excess of $20,000_and debt collector s who insisted the son was legally obligated to pay what his father owed.
Fortunately, Schmoll knew better.
"I've been working in financial services for two decades," says Schmoll, an Omaha, Nebraska, resident who was a stockbroker before starting his site, Frugal Rules. "I knew that I wasn't responsible."
Baby boomers are expected to transfer trillions to their heirs in coming years. But many people will inherit little more than a pile of bills.
Nearly half of seniors die owning less than $10,000 in financial assets, according to a 2012 study for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Meanwhile, debt among older Americans is soaring. It used to be relatively unusual to have a mortgage or credit card debt in retirement. Now, 23 percent of those older than 75 have mortgages, a four-fold increase since 1989, and 26 percent have credit card debt, a 159 percent increase, according to the Federal Reserve's latest data from the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances.
Submitted March 06, 2018 at 12:31PM by L1ghtf1ghter http://ift.tt/2Fk44sw
