ummm no.
You can’t bequeath debts.
You can voluntarily pay someone debts who has passed. Generally the only reason this is done is so that the assets that are encumbered by the debt is freed up, or to close out probate.
In this case, the poor kid had no assets, and the debt was only in his name.
The parents have zero responsibility to pay those debts.
Only true if you inherit your mother's estate.
If she has more debt than equity, you have no legal obligation for her bills, but you can't take the equity and stiff her creditors.
Unless you co-signed on the debt, you don’t owe your mother’s debts. If she left an estate, that estate must pay off any debts, but not you as an individual. The State of North Carolina tried this with me and my stepfather. They lost.
While it may be the right thing for you to dobase upon how you feel about it morally; you do not have to pay off the debts of someone else.
Unless you co-signed for them, how are you responsible for the debts of other adults?
If you inherited something from your mother and the creditors want a piece of that, you do not owe anything to those creditors. It is your mother's estate that owes the creditors and your mother's estate will become completely "yours" only after all the estate's debts are paid off.
You are not paying off her debts. Her estate is.
If that is not the case, you have no legal obligation to keep on paying.
Yeah, well, that happens.
I’ve got to pay off the debts
that my mother left.
_______
If she left an estate behind, as I understand it, you are correct. This young man, however, had no estate, so there was nothing in his name from which to pay the creditors.
Very different situations - again, as I understand the laws here in Maryland. Just went through this with my dad in June 08. The vendors can sniff through probate all they want, but he left nothing behind in his name.