Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Pennsylvania

You do not indicate any important facts. Did your father have a will? If so, who is the executor? Has an estate been probated for your father? Does an estate need probated?

Your father's debts are the responsibility of your father's estate. The proper procedure, if your father has probate assets, is for the personal representative to probate an estate. The representative gathers any information about the assets and debts. Any monies owed to the bank will be debts and they will be paid out of estate assets. If there is insufficient funds in the estate then priority claims are paid first, like funeral bills and family allowances, then anything like a bank debt, which comes last.

It sounds like your father did not have much. If that is the case, you do not pay the bank back. Why woiuld you do that? Why would you be sued personally? You are not personally liable for the debt are you? You indicate that the account was only in your father's name so I don't know how you could be personally liable.

If your father had no assets and only debts, then I would write a certified letter to the bank advising that your father had an account, that your father is deceased, that your father had no probate assets, that no estate will be probated and that you are not personally liable for your father's debts. Include a copy of the death certificate. Nothing else needs done. Bank will write it off as a loss.