Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Minnesota

Re: Debt responsibilities

You need to sit down, preferably with a competent lawyer, and figure out how your name got on those bills. If as is often done, you signed papers agreeing to be liable for the medical bills, you may have a problem.

What typically happens is something like this. The person is sick. You bring them to the hospial or doctor. The health care folks say here fill out and sign these papers. In the paperwork that you didn't read is a provision that says if all else fails, you have to pay the bill. Sign something like that and you may be stuck.

It's important to get letters in the mail to all the places sending you bills denying responsibility. If they continue to insist that you owe personally for the bills, then you have to request copies of the paperwork that creates such a liability. Once that paperwork comes, you need to have a lawyer review it.

And the best bet is get to a lawyer right away before you mess it up any worse. Sounds like you may already have screwed up some.

If you are really stuck with somone else's large medical bills, that's the sort of thing bankruptcy was invented for.

Good luck.