I served as the executor when my mother died. I continued to receive bills for her expenses for a year or so. I investigated each one. If she owed it, I paid it. If she didn’t, I filed it away.
Two bills, I fought. One was a bill for some kind of service I knew I’d canceled. I’d kept my cancellation information and their written confirmation. I called and explained the situation, complete with the date they’d canceled service. They disputed that and still wanted payment so I sent them a copy of their confirmation of the cancellation. That solved the problem.
The other was a weird case. My grandfather had purchased shares in Texas oil wells through a cereal box top offer back in the 1930’s. My mother inherited them and transferred them to her name when he died in the 1960’s. It was nothing but a tax scam.
The oil company sent my mother quarterly checks for years, but the checks were never for more than 2–3 cents. Meantime, the local tax authorities sent an annual assessment for taxes due (about $20 per year) for her share of the oil well (something like 0.0000235%).
When she died, her shares were not in her will, so I left them in her name and notified the taxing agency and later their attorneys that she’d passed away and nobody had taken ownership of the shares but I was willing to donate them to the county.
They sent me nasty letters for a few years, but quit after I sent them a polite letter saying that my mother was taking advantage of one of the only benefits to being dead. She no longer had to pay taxes.
My father passed away in 2018 – just after his 90th birthday. He was VERY thrifty during his life and there’s no way he would have incurred debt in his final years.
I was sued by a local finance company despite the FACT that I denied all their claims and had provided a copy of my Dad’s death certificate. Fortunately my Mom wanted her ashes mixed with Dad and she’s still alive, so I had Dad’s ashes in a plain, plastic box. They filed a formal complaint and were awarded a court date.
Acting as his attorney per se (a friend of the court) I took Dad to trial. I played it for all it was worth. The Judge asked who I was and what was on the table next to me. “Your honor, I’m representing my Father as a friend of the court and that, Sir, is my client.”
You should have heard the judge RIP APART the attorney for the finance company. It was brilliant. Wish I’d recorded it. Needless to say, their complaint was dismissed with prejudice.
My boyfriend died and I notified his bank and closed his account, paid off his credit card. Then they started demanding $5K exactly. I talked to them they claimed they sent out blank checks for him to get an advance on a credit card. Someone cashed the checks after he was dead. I filled out paperwork claiming he didn’t cash any checks while dead, they turned it over to a collection agency.
I ignored them, they are the ones who mailed out blank checks to a rural mail box at a house nobody lived in. They may not have even had my name or phone number I shut his phone off. I wasn’t about to pay money for something after he died and had already told them not his bill.
