contactual obligations after death

[Tamara Meade]

What is the name of your state?
I live in Washington State and my grandfather passed away a few months ago. My mother has called all of his creditors and given the information requested from them and she has ran into a few problems with two of the creditors. One is AOL says that my grandfather was in a contract and that they would be sending her some paperwork for her to fill out so they can release some information to her and add her to the account, I feel with my grandfathers passing that that ended his contractual obligations and my mother should not be responsible for keeping up the service for which she would not use or has no way to use. The second one is a timeshare that my mother received a final bill from them after his passing and paid it, told them to take back because not worth any money and she did not want it. They sent my mom another final bill for my grandmother who passed away over 10 years ago and my grandfather had made his payments on time until his passing. I dont think that she should pay that one either if it took them ten years to discover that a balance due if at all one really extists. Does my mother have to worry about this?

 

[nextwife]

Honest to gosh! AOL is trying to force your mom to continue dead grampa's internet service? Mentches they are not.

 

[Dandy Don]

Can the estate afford to pay these bills or not?

Since it was your grandfather who entered into these contracts/agreements, your mother would need to look at the actual agreements to see what he agreed to, and it wouldn't hurt to have a second party (a friend, you, or an attorney) look at them to see what the terms are for cancellation.

In some instances she can probably go ahead and inform them that she wants to cancel and there may be no further obligation--in other instances, there might be some type of payment required--only after reading the fine print will she know what her options are.

It may be fairly easy to end the AOL contract and she should end it if she has no use for it, but the time share is a real estate obligation and you would have to read that contract carefully to see what the terms are (if she has equity she may want to sell it to someone else if that is permissible, but if she doesn't want to continue paying she can certainly take a loss if she wants to)--don't just accept what the companies say must be done--try to see what the documents say because that is the determining factor.

 

[nextwife]

"my grandmother who passed away over 10 years ago..."

Grandma is deceased/