When someone dies do you have to assume their debt???

My mother in law is in ill heath and she has an extreme amount of credit card debt, do we have to pay this off when she dies??? My husband is the executor of the estate and we are concerned. She does not have much else that we could even sell, her house she owes over 120,000 and we do not believe we can even get that if we sell it so that is more debt, can anyone help me understand how this works

You need to get an Estate Lawyer to handle her financial affairs. Here's what happened with my brother...the house was sold, even though it wasn't paid for, but what little that came back from that house paid for some of his debts. He was in debt big time. Mom and dad got an Estate Lawyer to make sure they wouldn't be having to sell their house or paying for any debts themselves.

Edit: Also, when people die, there are scam artists that find out about it and use their SSN to do whatever all scam artists do. That SSN will be null and void for about six months or longer, until it's assigned to a child, but the day or week after they die, scam artists will pick it up. An Estate Lawyer comes in handy there as well.

The estate must pay the debt some how some way. the executor is the one in charge of seeing it done.

if she sells the house before she dies then there isn't anything to go back on for collections

The executor doesn't have to go into his own pocket for someone elses debts

In this case, it might be best to have a court appointed executor handle the estate. You can ask a judge to do this. None of the debt is yours, but the bills have to be paid before any inheretance gets paid out.

Unless you are co-signers for something or anything like that relating to the debt, then you owe nothing to the debt holders.

You are not personally liable for her debts. Her assets will be sold and paid to her creditors. If she still owes them money, they have to eat the loss.