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My husband is beginning to take care of his mom's bills. We want to see her living on her own as long as possible so we do what we can. He was shocked to find a 15k credit card bill. She already lives in a high rise so she has no home equity. What happens to that debt if/when a) She has to go into a nursing home....or b) She passed away?

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If she passes away and the credit card is only in her name, it is her debt, no one else's. They may try to collect from her estate but good luck with that. As for the nursing home question, not sure how they look at debt, medicaid is concerned with her assests and gifts she has given in the previous 5 years before needing medicaid.
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Madge1 is correct. Medicaid is concerned with assets. they don't care about debt because all of the income/assets of the applicant go to Medicaid.

What I did for my mother when she had her heart attack was this...

I found out she had about $15,000 in debt as well, and I was just as shocked as you were. I contacted my local Office of the Aging and they put me in touch with a senior legal center at a local college.

The law center, free of charge by the way, wrote a letter to each creditor explaining the situation that Mom's income would be taken by Medicaid.

In this letter I included a letter from the nursing stating that Mom was a resident there now and explaining her physical condition.

That was in February of 2012 and haven't heard from then since. After all, do you think Wal-Mart is going to take nursing home residents to court?

My advice to your husband would be to see if he can find a pro-bono lawyer to do the same thing.
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It would be blood from a stone. My mother-in-law has her social security, enough life insurance to cover funeral expenses and that's about it.
Thank you folks...I will have him look into that!
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Mams,

In addition to the Office of the Aging, try your local Lion's club as well. They may be able to point you to a community group or a pro bono lawyer that can assist you. And if I can think of any other pro bono legal resources I will let you know.
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