Am I responsible for a bill to the care facility where my father passed away?
Full Question:
Answer:
A contract may be legally defined as a voluntary, legally enforceable, agreement made by persons with the proper capacity. It should include:
1) an offer;
2) an acceptance; and
3) consideration, or an exchange of value.
A contract may involve a duty to do or refrain from doing something, and the failure to perform such duty is called a breach of contract. A legal action for breach of contract arises when at least one party's performance does not live up to the terms of the contract and causes the other party to suffer economic damage or other types of measurable injury. The law provides remedies if a promise is breached- aiming to restore the person wronged to the position they would occupy if the contract had not been breached, rather than punish the breaching party. A contract may be express or implied. A unilateral contract is one in which there is a promise to pay or give other consideration in return for actual performance. A bilateral contract is one in which a promise is exchanged for a promise. In most cases, contracts can be either written or oral, but oral contracts are more difficult to prove and in most jurisdictions the time to sue on the contract is shorter. Contracts are mainly governed by state statutory and common (judge-made) law and private law. Private law generally refers to the terms of the agreement between the parties, as parties have freedom to override many state law requirements regarding formalities of contracts. Contracts related to particular activities or industries may be highly regulated by state and/or federal law.
An accord and satisfaction is a method of discharging a contract, or settling a cause of action arising either from a contract or a civil wrong (tort), by substituting for the contract or cause of action an agreement for its satisfaction and the performance of the substituted agreement. The accord is the agreement; the satisfaction is the performance of the agreement. To create an accord there must be a substitute offer in full satisfaction of an existing claim, accompanied by a declaration amounting to a condition that if the offer is accepted it will be in full satisfaction of the original claim.
A deceased's debts should be paid with the property in their estate (the property left at their death). Children do not inherit their parent's debts unless they created a co-signor/guarantor/surety/joint account relationship to the debt, so that the child's name is on the debt also, and it is not a separate debt. Spouses will generally only be liable for a separate debt of the deceased if they live in a community property state. However, state laws vary about which marriage partner is responsible for certain debts, depending upon when the debt was incurred, the identity of the debtor, or the purpose of the debt.
Only after the debts are paid will the remaining assets be distributed among the beneficiaries of the will. When a child inherits property that is collateral for a debt, the debt comes with the property. If there is insufficient money or assets to pay all creditors, then the estate must be divided up as equally as possible, with secured creditors receiving priority. This means that if the deceased parent died with little or no money in their accounts and did not own a home, unsecured debt, such as credit card debt, will not be paid to the creditors.
