Credit Card Payment Responsibility?

[gaylehamm]

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? New Jersey
My father passed away October, 2001 after 18 months in a nursing home. He had no assets and was on medicade with his full retirement payments going to the nursing home each month. He had several credit cards which he paid faithfully until he became hospitalized with no income. I contacted his creditors at that time. There were two credit cards with my name on as an authorized user. One is with Chase Bank, the other with Bank of America. When he died, I did not contact these two companies to advise such and continued to make the monthly payments on time. He had a very low interest rate because of an excellent credit history. Since I had secondary cards in my name, I did continue to use them while going through a divorce. The original cards expired in 2003, when the new cards came I called each credit card company to advise he had died in 2001 but I was making the payments. Both companies "cancelled" the cards, but I continued to make the monthly payments in good faith since I had made charges on them. (Chase raised the interest rate to 24.99%!!) I am now having severe health problems, with high medications expenses and can no longer continue to make these payments on my single salary. Am I legally obligated to pay these accounts since they are both in my father's name as the primary card holder? Also, I have my personal checking account with one of these credit card companies. Can the bank freeze my checking account or make automatic deductions from it to pay the credit card? I did not know if I am now obligated since I have been making the payments for several years. Any advice you can give will be appreciated. I apologize for the lenght of this note, but needed to give you all the fact. Thank you.