life insurance/landlord tenant/intestate

State: OK

Friend/tenant put life insurance policy in my name in
case he died before he could pay back $ he owed me.

He died. No will. No spouse. No children.

Owes me $2400+ in back rent, lot rent, utilities.
I held property for 30 days.

Can I begin selling property?

Other creditors have contacted me to pay his bills out
of life insurance. Am I obligated to pay his bills because
I was listed on life insurance policy?

Note: life insurance = $5,000.00; bills and medical bills
are over $35,000.00!

How much is the property estimated to be worth and what does it consist of?

You really should speak to a local probate attorney to find out if it would be advisable for you to become administrator of this estate, which would give you official, legal authority to claim all of his assets and to sell anything you want.

Since there is no one else (except the creditors) who have a financial interest in this estate, you can decide not to be administrator and still take the risk of selling things which I guess would not leave much of a paper trail to trace the sales back to you, which might be what you want. You should be informed that the creditors could also file to be administrator of the estate, in order to try to collect the assets, but that is very rare and is almost never done.

You personally are under no obligation to use the life insurance money to pay his debts--that money is yours totally to do whatever you want to with it. I hope you are not telling the creditors that you have his life insurance money--if you have been telling them that, please stop! That is private information that only you should know. If the creditors know you have some money, they might start legal action to try to get you to pay, even though it would be unsuccessful, you might have to defend yourself in paying legal fees.

If possible, you need to try to be sure that the funeral bill has been paid.

If there is not enough money in the estate to pay off the bills, the estate is technically considered bankrupt and the companies are eventually going to write them off as bad debts anyway.

DANDY DON

Personal note to "Dandy Don" - -

I have been following your posts, and I think you're a terrific, wonderful, addition to the FreeAdvice family of contributors.

Thanks for your knowledge and your time.

IAAL

(P.S. What is your background?)

To Don:

Funeral is paid in full

Bills received to date: $62,000+

Assets: $433.00 state tax refund, clothes, 1988 car, possibly
2001 federal tax refund of $2000.00, stereo, some tools.

Life ins policy = $5,000.00

Thank you