CrimeaPRESS reports:
“Six months ago, my mother and father died almost simultaneously. They left behind jointly acquired property: an apartment and a dacha. They were registered to my dad. Both mom and dad still have debts.
I only entered into an inheritance from my dad, since all the property is registered in his name. I didn’t enter into an inheritance from my mother: there was almost nothing to formalize there — only debts.
Now creditors are calling me and demanding to pay off my mother’s debts. They say that the parents had jointly acquired property. Explain, do I have to pay anything?”
Alas, I will have to pay off my mother’s debts. But only if their size does not exceed the cost of the apartment and dacha. You write that the property was jointly acquired, that is, by law it belonged to your parents in half. It doesn’t matter who the owner was according to the documents.
In fact, the debts are also common, and not mom’s and dad’s. I assume that we are talking about loans that they took out during marriage. Then it is implied that mom acted with the consent of dad and dad was obliged to return the money on an equal basis with mom.
Why did parents’ debts become inherited? It follows from the question that neither of your parents left a will and that the parent who died later did not have time to apply to the notary for the inheritance. I will also assume that your family consisted of three people and there were no other heirs.
It doesn’t matter that you didn’t apply to accept your mother’s inheritance. You cannot refuse a part of the inheritance due for one of the reasons. Even if you had not applied for an inheritance from your dad, but had stayed to live in your parents’ apartment, you would have inherited the apartment, the dacha, and the debts. Since it is impossible to establish which half of the apartment was my mother’s, using the entire apartment, you accepted my mother’s share of property and debts.
The bank can easily prove that you accepted the inheritance through actual actions, because we are talking about real estate. Use of an apartment is proven by registration, payment of utility bills, purchase of new furniture for the apartment, and so on. For example, when the heirs themselves prove that they actually accepted the inheritance, they can refer to the fact that they came to water the flowers or took away a family photo album. Even paying a fee on your father’s loan is already considered an inheritance of parental loan obligations and real estate.
When one of your parents died immediately after the other, without having time to contact a notary to accept the inheritance, his right to inherit passed to you. This is called hereditary transmission.
When, after your dad’s death, you turned to a notary, he did not demand that your mother’s marital share be allocated from the property of which dad was the title owner.
After your mother died, there were two heirs left: you and your dad. Mom owned half of the apartment and dacha acquired during marriage. If dad had not died or refused the inheritance in your favor, he would have inherited a quarter of the apartment and the dacha. Then you would inherit a quarter from mom and three quarters from dad as the sole heir.
Since there are no other heirs or inheritance from the outside, the result is the same. And if dad inherited a quarter from mom, and then passed it on to you, and if you accepted the inheritance from mom as a result of transmission. That is, mother’s debts will have to be paid.
But you may not have to return the entire amount. For example, if the apartment and dacha are dilapidated and cost a total of 2 million rubles, and your parents have 3.5 million left in loans, you will have to return only 2 million rubles to the banks or transfer the property to pay off the debt. Creditors will have to write off the remaining amount.
When it is possible not to repay parental debts. If the parents had drawn up a marriage contract before the loans, all subsequent debts could have become personal, and the jointly acquired property could have become the personal property of the owner in whose name it is registered.
If the statute of limitations has expired. For example, your mother took out a loan in 2015, stopped paying it in 2018, and died in 2020. It turns out that since 2018, the creditor knew that payments were overdue, but did not demand the money back. The three-year statute of limitations expired in 2021. From this moment you can refuse to return the money. If the creditor went to court, you could tell the judge that the statute of limitations had expired, and the court would side with you.
If the loan balance is insured. Banks usually offer better interest rates if you insure the loan balance in case of death or disability. True, the older the borrower, the more expensive the insurance, so people often refuse it. Perhaps your mother had such a policy — paper or electronic. Whether there is insurance or not, only the bank knows for sure. Write a request there. A written response will come in handy if you later discover an insurance policy that the lender didn’t mention.
source: Notary Chamber of Sevastopol
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