I’ve lost a lot of respect for the New York Times over the years; the last big drop came with their continual and unabashed sucking-up to the new administration in some lame attempt to keep themselves from the verge of extinction. So rarely do I bother reading them any more.
But sometimes a link will lead me to peruse their electronic pages and today I found a truly pathetic article there. It speaks volumes to me about the wicked state of the financial industry in this country when there is actually a company, DCM, that calls on the families of dead people asking them to pay the dead one’s debts.
Folks, these are debts which the families have absolutely NO legal obligation to cover. Yet the saddest part is that a lot of well-meaning individuals do pay them.
Now it’s no longer a secret. If you die and there no estate against which a bill collector can file a claim, that’s their tough luck. It’s one of the risks they take in doing business.
Let me type this really slowly one more time, just so we’re all clear on this:
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY THE BILLS FOR A DEAD PERSON OUT OF YOUR OWN POCKET IF YOUR NAME ISN’T ON THEIR DEBT.
They say you can’t get blood out of a stone. Remember, you can’t get money from a dead person, either.
Actually such folks have been around for ages, so this isn’t a ‘new for our times’ thing, someone just decided to write about it.