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[Good_Egg]

Simple question - is debt inheritable ?

To what extent can you burden your heirs with debts that they did not choose to incur ?

Thinking first about legal debts. And then extrapolating to moral obligations...

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To start the ball rolling, consider debt in terms of IOUs.

Suppose C holds a witnessed IOU signed by D saying that D owes C £10.

If C dies, and one of his heirs inherits the IOU, is it still valid ? Can he take it to D and claim the £10 ?

Conversely if D dies, does the IOU give C a valid claim against the assets of D's heirs ? Who may be multiple people unwilling to co-operate...

My understanding is that in English law, the process of probate - dealing with the assets of the deceased - is supposed to include some sort of public notice to the effect that that anyone with a claim on D's assets should come forward now.

So that if C presents his IOU to the executor of D's estate then it will be honoured (if the net value of the estate exceeds £10).

But if he doesn't, if he for whatever reason he lets probate go through unchallenged and later presents his IOU to one of D's heirs then it's invalid - a worthless piece of paper with no legal force.

In other words, credit can be inherited but debt cannot.

Is that correct in English law ?

Is it similar in other jurisdictions that you're aware of ?

Is that just ? Or unjust ? Or is that question meaningless ?

[epsilonmil]

Hello and good day, Good_Egg and thank you for presenting your question. To start, if one party holds an IOU with another and if the witnessed statement only shows involvement with the two specified parties and not descendants, then it could be considered useless if one of the two pass away. A time span is established by the court for effective action and different states, such as throughout the United States, most likely have differing rules on when IOUs could be presented to descendants if it says so in the agreement; for example, when regarding estate taxes, a Form 706 must be filed within nine months of a decedent's passing to the IRS in order to avoid penalty.
Conducting research on English law regarding topics of debts, credits, and executors give interesting information. Through secular courts in the 16th century, creditors could not sue estate executors unless a specialty was granted by royal permission. An executor risked perjury if they were to present such a case against a creditor as the decedent presented the risk if they were still alive to answer to examination. There was also a separation in the roles that secular and Church courts could play when being involved in such cases. The former were more involved with settling suits involving debtors, creditors, and executors than the latter as Church courts could be impeded by royal actions.

Hope this at least gets matters rolling even though I was quite broad

[Good_Egg]

Thanks, epsilonmil for engaging with the topic.

I think you're right that the law will in general wish to recognise, validate and enforce contracts freely entered into, under a range of different contract terms. Rather than insisting that rights acquired under such contracts are or are not transferable. So that there will be examples both ways - debts that lapse on the death of either party, and debts that are fully transferable - depending on how the contract is written.

Which is a complicating factor. I was hoping that there would be in law some recognition of a general principle as to what is or is not heritable.

I think you're confirming that when someone dies, there is a period of "reasonable time" during which their "estate" is deemed to exist. And during that period, the executor can and should try to both
- claim for the estate debts owed to the person when alive
- pay from the estate debts owed by the person that were incurred when they were alive.
But that after that time, the estate no longer exists.

In general it is divided between a number of people, some of whom will inherit bequests of fixed sums or items and some of whom will inherit a share of the remaining total.

With different jurisdictions having different ideas of what is a reasonable time.

Is there such a general principle ? A default that applies unless contract terms specify otherwise?

And then, is there any reason why such a default principle should be different for debts incurred by agreement and debts incurred through wrongful action ?

Maybe D (for Debtor) stole £50 from C (for creditor) or borrowed it and refused to pay back, or borrowed it and couldn't at the time pay back but now can. Does it make any difference which ?

In the absence of agreed contract terms, there ought to be an accepted answer in principle as to whether
- C's heirs can claim it from D while he lives
- C can claim it from D's heirs if D dies first.

The logic of probate seems to be that the answer in both cases is "only if the claim is made during the probate process" ??