Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Illinois

Re: Liability for debts of deceased spouse

Only if the charges on the balance were for the necessities of the deceased. The surviving spouse has an obligation to pay for the necessities of the deceased, such as food, clothing, and medical care. If the charges are not for necessities, the surviving spouse has no liability.

As a practical matter, however, the creditor may not press its claim against either the estate or the surviving spouse.

Re: Liability for debts of deceased spouse

IF the person died a resident of Massachusetts, then I can give you an opinion, otherwise not.

The credit card company has a lien in anything purchased with the credit card, which means that if they can find what s/he bought and repossess it, or even find the proceeds of sale of anything the deceased purchased, they can claim it. In general, aside from jewelry, art, a car or a boat, the chances of that are slim.

On another hand, if the card was used to buy food, medicine, or medical services, there is a slight chance that the survivor would be held under very old principles of law to be liable for those purchases -- "necessities" (of life). Clothing could be in that category as well. The two old principles dated to a time when 1) the local doctor may have known that the surviving spouse was healthy and was aware of what the less healthy spouse was spending the money upon, but more to the point, 2) the merchants providing those necessities of life had a fairly strong obligation to do so without cutting off the dying person and this is society's bargain to help ease that burden. In modern times, these principles don't hold as much weight and it's questionable whether a credit card company can claim to have supplied anything themselves anyway so it's hard to say how that rule would apply.

The reality is that if it's only a few hundred or a couple thousand dollars, they'll press you for the probate court docket number so they can register their claim, but they won't do anything more after that; if there's nothing to put through probate, they lose, end of story.