A: If you are married and your deceased spouse is the only party who signed
as the borrower under a debt, including a mortgage, then you as the non-borrower
are not personally liable. A secured lender, however, retains its rights
which were granted by the deceased spouse pre-death, and can sell the
property at foreclosure sale if the mortgage payments fall behind. If
the debt is an unsecured debt, an unsecured creditor has only a claim
against the estate of the deceased spouse, and only if the estate has
to be filed to transfer assets. Not all assets have to pass through probate,
particularly jointly owned assets... they pass to the joint owner immediately
upon death of the other owner. That is part of what is referred to when
lawyers mention "estate planning." Estate planning is a process
of setting up ownership of assets to preserve the assets for the next
generation or surviving spouse by protecting the assets from excessive
taxation and creditor claim(s).
