Here is an actual transcript of a conversation between a man, Paul Kelleher, and Bank of America when Keller called to tell B of A and his mother’s other creditors that his mother had died:
Paul Kelleher: Yes, I’m calling to inform you that my mom died on the 24th of January.
Bank of America Estates representative: I’m sorry. Oh, it looks like she never even missed a payment. That’s too bad. Well, how are you planning to take care of her balance?
PK: I’m not going to. She has no estate to speak of, but you should feel free to just go through the standard probate procedure. I’m certainly not legally obligated to pay for her.
BOA: You mean you’re not going to help her out?
PK: I wouldn’t be helping her out — she’s dead. I’d be helping you out.
BOA: Oh, that’s really not the way to look at it. I know that if it were my mother, I’d pay it. That’s why we’re in the banking crisis we’re in: banks having to write off defaulted loans.
Apparently, this is standard practice:
Kelleher’s reported conversation, the former rep said, “sounds like how I would have attempted to collect” in such a situation. “I would have asked: ‘How do you plan on paying for this?'”
The (former B of A) rep said that employees were encouraged to walk right up to the line of actively deceiving a caller about the consequences of non-payment. “As long as you don’t get caught [lying],” the former rep added, “there’s no really no punishment.” The former rep did not work in the estates unit, but confirmed, based on direct knowledge of B of A’s practices, that it operates similarly to the former rep’s own unit.
When I read things like this, I don’t feel so good about having a credit card company whore as vice-president or about the 19 Democratic Senators who voted for the bankruptcy bill.
myiq2xu
I guess the late Mrs. Kelleher really is a deadbeat
Balconesfault
Of course, this is what BOA representatives are encouraged to do. The company is out to make money … as you’ll hear any time some unsavory action by a corporation is pointed out, their first responsibility is not to the client, and certainly not to the greater community – but their "fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder."
It is the ultimate defense to all forms of assholishness – from crapping on workers, dumping on the environment, or maximizing their fleecing of clients – if the marketplace (or government regulation) doesn’t punish a certain behavior, they have to practice it out of a responsibility to their investors.
Comrade Darkness
Both sides are always going to be owned by someone without a serious change in campaign laws. Seems like given the royal f*ck up we are suffering the mood should be amenable to some changes getting rammed through–even tho the persons making the changes have everything to lose by doing so.
We are dropping our BoA account because of their use of bailout funds for funding wingnut activists. Not that our local bank will be any cleaner, but they at least are a defacto smaller version of evil.
WyldPirate
Honestly, as bad as I hate the corruption, incompetence and proud "know-nothingness" of the Rethugtards, I had a knot in my stomach voting for a ticket with Joe Biden on it. He’s been a whore for the rotten loan shark, er, credit card companies forever. He’s also been perhaps the biggest Dem supporter for one of the biggest failures in law enforcement and domestic policy–the "War on Drugs".
Not a Biden fan at all. I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.
Forgot that he is a plagirist as well.
SGEW
Yeah, I still feel a li’l queasy about that too. It was my trump card during the primaries (besides the whole "sectarian divisions are great!" thing) when I was debating with a Biden supporter. I’m just hoping that Obama stays healthy and that Champ sticks to his constitutional duties (i.e., doing jack shit).
And Salazar on that list o’ 19 Dems, btw.
John Cole
One more time- Obama is just as “centrist” regarding Wall Street and credit card companies and the financial industries. For goodness sakes, he promoted a Rubin disciple with tax problems to treasury.
kay
You can make a fair argument that the bankruptcy bill contributed to the foreclosure crisis.
It kicked in just as people realized they were in over their heads on mortgage debt, and they were already drowning in unsecured debt. The new rules kicked a lot of people out of Chapter 7. They had to prioritize, and pay both a mortgage and the credit card debt they (now) couldn’t discharge.
At the time I thought it was preemptive. Unsecured creditors knew they were going to be last in line for payment when house ‘o cards came crashing down, so they lobbied and rewrote the rules.
SGEW
@John Cole:
But that’s the thing: Biden isn’t (wasn’t?) "centrist" on the issue. He was the Delaware Champion of the industry! He was effectively a full time lobbyist for them – credit card companies should have put his face on their business cards. He was their chief advocate in the Senate.
Ok, maybe that’s a bit hyperbolic, sure. But the point is, Biden is rightfully perceived as having staked his career on supporting the credit card industry. Much more so than Obama, whose long-term policy ideas on the credit industry have yet to be seen (which is a whole other debate).
Potted Plant
I don’t know what I’m missing. I don’t think that the Bank’s conduct was outrageous at all. It was simply trying to collect on a debt that clearly was owed and, while I understand that the son had no legal obligation to pay the debt on behalf of his mother, I like to think that I’ll make such payments when that time comes.
The Grand Panjandrum
It is also interesting who the one Senator is that missed the vote. The junior Senator from NY.
The Democrats fucked over working people on this. They could have stopped the bill. They didn’t.
When the average citizens gets in over their head they go under. When Wall Street and the Big Banks get in over their head they get bailed out. Nice gig if you can get it.
Brian J
I thought we were in this crisis mostly because of a real estate bubble encouraged by absurdly generous loans to people who could barely afford them finally crashed, eliminating the source of money for a decent portion of the country and thus crimping the rest of us, and because a bunch of derivatives plummeted in value/defaulted, leading to a massive drop in asset prices. I had no idea deceased women refusing to pay their bills were responsible. Learn something new every day, I guess.
I’m not sure what to expect from this news conference from Obama tomorrow, but if he wants to extend his popularity, some articulate shots at the financial industry, along with some changes in laws like the ones on executive compensation that aren’t toothless, would go a long way towards helping that. I can understand the need for a bail out of the financial system, but I don’t see why it was inevitable that these assholes took the government and the tax payers for such a ride. It’s hard to be perfect in any circumstances, particularly when there’s not a huge history to base your actions on, but these people played us for idiots, all because, it seems, we didn’t have to will the stop them.
As far as Biden goes, I’m not sure if it’s fair to really blame him for anything here. His support of the bankruptcy bill was awful, but it’s not as if he himself is responsible for the practices that this industry is spawned. Even if you don’t grant him some leeway because it’s a home state industry, there were a number of actors that appear responsible for throwing gas onto this fire, not least of all the part of the public that didn’t act responsible with money.
matt
Way, way off topic, but does anyone know if Phil Carter ever plans to blog again at Intel Dump? He stopped to work with the Obama campaign, but then never returned.
Brian J
Well, I guess that’s your decision, but it seems a little, um…I don’t know how else to put this…stupid. The woman in question was dead. She had no credit score to watch. She wasn’t going to be screwing over anyone, except for perhaps Bank of America, but then, I’m sure they have write offs exponentially larger than that every year, so it’s hardly going to break the company. Nor was this going to affect the woman’s son.
Besides, it has a tool of its own: the woman’s estate is on the line if she has debts. But in this case, she had no estate. The law, unless there’s some part of it I don’t know about, states that if she has no assets to speak of, the debt is done. Unless the name of someone else is on the line, such as co-signing for a loan, for this debt, nobody is responsible. It may be slightly annoying for the company, but that’s the law, and like I said above, I can’t see this is going to break them.
Except the company tried to pretend otherwise. I don’t have the legal background to know if this is really lying, but if not, it’s probably as close as it’s going to get without crossing that line. And that’s absolute horseshit. The idea that a company can actively deceive people and get away with it is infuriating, because it’s a violation of their end of the deal: to obey laws so that they can perform business and make money. If they truly felt that this set up was outrageous, they should work to change the laws in an honest fashion. Instead, they chose to act like scumbags in a variety of ways, and I have no sympathy for them at all.
kay
@Brian J:
not least of all the part of the public that didn’t act responsible with money.
Hmmm. I’d argue that offering unsecured creditors protection from risk encouraged poor lending practice.
They collect those astronomical interest rates because they’re taking a risk. Offering them additional protections to cover that risk isn’t the job of Congress. That’s two bites of the apple.
Shunting people to Chapter 13 was the added insult. A federal court shanghaied to write and enforce a repayment plan to an unsecured creditor? Amazing. They’re at the back of the line. They get both high interest and protection on default. That’s a sweet deal.
DougJ
Exactly. This isn’t about how wonderful Obama is on these issues, it’s about how much worse Biden is.
It’s not clear to me Obama would have voted for the bankruptcy bill.
Brian J
@kay:
It’s never been clear to me exactly who was responsible for what portion of the mess. It wouldn’t surprise me if changing the laws to suit the interests of financial institutions or such institutions conducting what amounted to predatory lending were the main culprits behind the problems we’ve been having.
But at the same time, nobody is really forced to act in a certain way. (I know, I know, medical debt is not exactly a choice, but still.) There’s a reason, at least to me, that every single company seemed to have a financing arm in recent years: it was possible to make boatloads of money off of collecting debt. Not that there’s anything wrong with this in general, or even that it’s an entirely new phenomenon, just that it’s reflective of a society living beyond its means. The banks may have been terrible in encouraging people to take out mortgages that they had a small chance of paying back unless the good times never ended, but if nobody walked into an office to apply for one on a house that they couldn’t afford, things might be a little different.
John Cole
I think you are missing the air quotes around centrist. As DougJ noted, nineteen Democrats voted for the bill. It may not be a centrist bill at all, but those were the “centrists” who work in “bi-partisan” fashion. Only flaming pinkos like Feingold voted against it. Go look at who voted for it:
Biden
Bayh
Reid
Inouye
both Nelsons
Lincoln
Like it or not, those are the “centrists” in the Democratic party. Obama, to his credit, voted against it. My point was that that was a right-wing bill, there is nothing centrist about it at all, but all the centrists jumped on it. Mr. Overton, check your window.
And one more time, Josh Trevino’s excellent post on the bill, back before Red State descended into pure comedy.
Rick Taylor
@Balconesfault: Of course, this is what BOA representatives are encouraged to do. The company is out to make money … as you’ll hear any time some unsavory action by a corporation is pointed out, their first responsibility is not to the client, and certainly not to the greater community – but their "fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder."
Which is why, to play my broken record, we need temporary nationalization of insolvent banks, rather than bailout money. The people running banks aren’t public servants; they’re not supposed to be. If we give them a bunch of money, and they use it for bonuses and planes, and more importantly horde it instead of lending it, the thing to do is to take them over, not wring our hands and lament that capitalists are behaving like capitalists,
The Grand Panjandrum
@DougJ: Check your link. He voted against it.
John Cole
The doo wop (sp?) portion of CBS Sunday morning is awesome. Back when I was a DJ, I engineered an Oldies show.
kay
@Brian J:
But at the same time, nobody is really forced to act in a certain way
No, they’re not. But unsecured creditors would have been forced to act more prudently if Congress hadn’t acted to protect them from poor lending practice. Or they would have gone out of business.
There’s no collateral behind those loans. The deal is, they get high interest rates to cover that risk. They don’t also get protection from default.
Rick Taylor
A while back, an in-law of mine passed away. He left behind some credit card debt, but the bank didn’t try to guilt trip the son into paying any of it. That was a few years ago, but at least then this wasn’t a universal practice at least.
sgwhiteinfla
OT but George S is grilling the shit out of Larry Summers right now over Krugmans post. And Larry Summers is trying his best not to say he agrees with Krugman……..while agreeing with Krugman. Its crazy. But to his credit he wouldn’t take the bait when George S kept trying to get him to say Pres Obama prefers the House bill. Of course it was a classic non denial denial.
DougJ
Yes, I just saw that. I had thought the vote took place earlier before he was in the Senate.
Xenos
@Potted Plant: Trying to collect a debt from someone who does not owe it is not just unethical or sleazy or something — it is against the law. It is a form of fraud. It is against federal law, and in Mass., where the illegal collection action took place, it is very actively investigated and prosecuted. That telephone call will result in fines of at least $10,000 being assessed against BoA.
If you feel obliged to pay such a debt there is a word for you: sucker.
magisterludi
As far as the public being irresponsible- true, but Wall Street called on Madison Ave to help the banks banish the term "second mortgage" and all its negative social connotations from our jargon and re-brand it "home equity line of credit". "Let your house work for you!", "Why keep your dreams on hold!"- we were bombarded with that shit for years. They spent billions in ad dollars encouraging us on our journey off the cliff.
Luckily, as a family that has managed to scrape out a decent living (so far) in the muzoid world for quite a few years, one thing you learn is there’s feast and famine, so always keep your overhead low. We may not have much, but our income-to-debt ratio is excellent.
JL
When my mother died at the age of 86 after a lengthy illness, I discovered that she had been paying on one credit card by taking out a new one. Had she had a large estate, the debt could have been handled by that. The company that my ex worked at had free legal advice if you were dealing with an elderly parent and would recommend attorneys. It is the norm for banks to issue credit cards especially to elderly even though they have maxed out other cards. Until the person dies, they collect the interest and then go after the estates. MNBA was the worse offender.
If I had a Bank of America account, I’d cancel it. They can go f**k themselves.
sgwhiteinfla
Oh my damn. George S is actually knocking the ball out of the park today. He is kicking Mike Steele in his junk over and over again and making him look quite silly while also baiting him into insulting construction workers as well as government workers by saying they don’t have "real" jobs.
John Cole
Is it just me or is George S. looking more and more like Michael Dukakis?
Is there some sort of weird regression to the mean with Greek men when they age, that the older they get they all look like the guy trying to sell me a gyro on Park Ave. and 32nd?
Laura W
Why do I have to wait till 11est for Georgie Porgie? It conflicts with my TOP CHEF re-run.
Alls I gots is McSame on FTN.
jenniebee
@Potted Plant: well, that’s very Mandevillian of you, right up to the end. At the end, you’re just a dupe.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Fuck you, Newt.
That is all.
JL
@Laura W:
I’m laughing at McCain. He’s like the person who wasn’t invited to the prom. At one point I thought that he was going to say "my friends".
Napoleon
@WyldPirate:
You know I give something like that a pass. One problem the Dems will always have is that if a certain business dominates a state any senator from that state is going to vote as if they are a Republican. A big corn and coal state like Ill. had Obama who maintained the BS position that ethanol and clean coal are viable energy sources, Ohio a big coal and industrial state sends Sherrod Brown who voted last year against that weak environmental bill, NY sent Shumer who votes with the fianancial industry, etc, etc.
If any one of those people were representing the country as a whole God only knows what position they would really take (and I bet you will see Obama’s policies either explictly or implicity disown his prior positions), and Biden is no differant (for those that do not know, Delaware is home to big credit card issuers).
Napoleon
@John Cole:
The people that people should be mad at are not Biden, who IMO is covering his behind in his state, but all those other people who had no such excuse.
Nicole
Thanks for the link to the Trevino piece, John. Here’s the part that echoes what I’m feeling today:
Yes, it sucks that 19 Dems voted for the bill, but it astounds me how the nation as a whole, liberals and conservatives alike, essentially give the Republicans a pass on their reprehensible behavior because we don’t expect any different from them. We should be just as angry at the Rs who voted for the bill but on this thread we’re just bashing the Dems. It makes me think of the response I would get again and again from self-described conservatives on another forum- "But the Democrats are just as bad/worse!" Okay, so that makes what the Republicans do okay?
By blaming the Dems because we expect them to stand up for the middle/lower class and giving the Republicans a pass because we expect them to be all out for the rich, we make it easier for the Republicans to control the argument, since they’re never held accountable for their behavior. Fuck the 19 Dems- how many Republicans voted for it? All but 2, I think.
Laura W
@JL: I’m laughing at him too, JL. However, I laughed harder at a comment in an earlier thread by one of the women here…kay or elie? A la: "He’s running the same campaign now that he lost with."
Too lazy to go find it and "bring it to ya’."
jcricket
Moral hazard only applies to us poor schmucks, not giant multi-nationals. And socialism is fine when it applies to companies but it will kill the economy if people have government-provided healthcare as an option. But seriously, this is the kind of thing you need regulations, with serious penalties, that you enforce, to at least curb. Sadly, I don’t think you can really stop it. Giant companies have written off the cost of everything but the worst fines or publicity as "the cost of doing business"
Besides, I don’t even think the fear of going out of business matters anymore for these huge companies. The CEO and senior executives makes 1000x a normal person’s salary. They’re usually able to juice up earnings for a couple of years, and earn 2000x a normal salary, before the shit hits the fan. And then usually they get a golden parachute worth one or two years of their obscene salaries when they get kicked to the curb. Basically the "long run" is too far away to matter, even economically. Sure, earning 2000x the normal salary for 4 years is "worse" than earning 500x for 20 years, but who wants to work for 20 years?
I think the system is broken. I don’t think pay caps are the right fix (except in this situation where you have companies on the dole), but I do think much increased top marginal tax rates a lot and removing the capital gains rate distinction (which helps mostly rich people, since those of us with stocks/bonds in our 401ks/IRAs don’t end up paying the lowered capital gains rate) would help. At least the government would have enough revenue to provide social programs for the poor, lower and middle classes to "equalize" some of the income disparity.
Laura W
@Laura W:
Kay…"McCain is running the same campaign he just lost."
Zifnab25
@John Cole: I don’t even know what "centrist" means anymore. So far, Obama has tried to angle his policies toward the politically practical and functionally feasible end of the spectrum (although that "Bad Bank" proposal sounds like a fucking train wreck).
But, at this point, designating his position on the ideological spectrum is somewhat absurd. We’ve got a Republican Party that considers a guy like John McCain on the liberal end of the spectrum. A "conservative" wing that considers massive government invasiveness – a la Terry Shiavo, wiretaps, and secret prisons – A-OK. Ideology got abandoned a long time ago for I-do-what-I-want. :-p
@Potted Plant: Imagine if you just graduated from college and your school called you up to ask for its next tuition payment. "Oh, but I’ve already graduated. I’m not taking any more classes." "Well, that’s fine sir, but we still expect you to give us your regular tuition payment so you can support your school."
I mean, it’s just ridiculous. There are specific procedures in place for handling a deceased person’s debts and obligations. You don’t try to guilt the next of kin into ponying up for anything. That’s just despicable. If Kelleher’s mom had any other outstanding debts, or if she had liens of some sort on her property, Kelleher could have exposed himself to massive further liability for stepping in and assuming any of them.
Beej
B of A is not the only business that tries this sort of thing. After his father’s death, my husband’s attorney sent a letter to all his father’s creditors stating that he had died and there was no estate (the entire estate was either insurance proceeds or held in joint tenancy and therefore not subject to probate). Three of the four credit card companies simply wrote off the debt. Sears sued my husband to collect what was owed on their credit card. The attorney tried to tell them that there was no estate, my husband’s name was not on the credit card, and there was no way my husband was responsible for the debt. Sears paid no attention. A court date was scheculed. Two days before the scheduled court date, Sears dropped the suit. This is called pressure tactics. They were trying to intimidate my husband into paying the debt. Fortunately, he’s a stubborn so-and-so, and it didn’t work. My husband got on the phone and contacted Sears’s customer relations department. He told them what had happened and that he wanted his attorney’s fees paid in full. They paid.
Karmakin
What Napoleon said. You really have to put this stuff into the perspective sometimes. Part of being a representitive of the people is you have to represent their interests. In Biden’s case, it’s a clear-cut thing if you ask me.
That said, I think what a lot of people miss is their motivations. It’s not JUST a matter of being for big business, or corruption. There’s a lot of people out there who feel that if you’re in debt, its your own fault, and you should face the consequences of it. Now mind you, health care costs are a huge part of bankruptcy…but you should have saved money for that, or should have had a better job with better insurance..that’s your fault for not getting an education in a marketable field and so on.
That’s their view at least. I call it Cosbian..for obvious reasons. I don’t agree with it, of course. And the bigger problem is that those people hate the idea of having the upper classes have their medicine as well. Why?
My guess is that they see the simple reality. You squeeze the lower classes, what happens. You lose their vote? Maybe if that. What happens to the upper classes? Well, they go on a tantrum, slash wages, cut hundreds of thousands of workers, and basically cause a recession. They use their power to relieve their personal pain, at the detriment of everybody else.
That’s the reality folks. And I think that ignoring the reality will get us nowhere. It’s going to take years..decades to change the social status quo when it comes to money and finance. It doesn’t happen in 2 and a half weeks!
Glocksman
When my mother passed away in 2000 with no estate, I called up her store cards to cancel them.
Most of them said ‘OK, just mail us a copy of the death certificate’ and that was it.
The cocksuckers behind her Kohl’s store card tried to guilt trip me into paying the $300 balance by asking me ‘didn’t I want to maintain her good name?’ and kept trying to convince me to pay until I just hung up in disgust.
I still to this day refuse to patronize that store.
J Royce
When I read things like this, I don’t feel so good about having a credit card company whore as vice-president or about the 19 Democratic Senators who voted for the bankruptcy bill.
Did you ever feel good about our VP or the treasonous Bankruptcy Bill? I know I didn’t.
We need to reform the Corporate structure. It is bad mojo to make immortal gollems with infinite appetites with no conscience and no accountability to mere flesh and blood.
gravie
I just closed all my Chase accounts because:
1. I made two very large payments — way more than my minimum — in December. Unfortunately for me, the second one was a day before the end of the statement period. Hence…
2. Chase charged me a late fee in January.
3. When I called to inquire, the smug little twerp on the other end of the phone chastised me for not understanding why a day on the other side of their artificial divide was going to cost me $25.
4. When I exclaimed, "You have got to be kidding me!" he chastised me for raising my voice.
5. After I was transferred to his supervisor and waited on the phone for almost five minutes while the supervisor "looked up my account," we had an almost verbatim repeat of this conversation, although the supervisor was at least more customer-friendly and offered to waive the fee because the payment I made in January was "only a day late." When I said that in fact I had paid early for my January deadline and their procedures on this made for ridiculous policy, he wanted to debate it with me. At which point our conversation — and my ongoing relationship with Chase — was over.
It’s all legal on their part because they’ve stacked the deck that way. And, yeah, I was pretty angry at Joe Biden back when the credit card companies were given free reign by Congress to screw over the consumer at will.
Potted Plant
Zifnab 25 — I don’t think that your tuition analogy works, because the Bank is trying to collect on a legitimate debt. I think that a better analogy would be a local business asking the son of a recently deceased person if he was going to pay for the oil change / service call / food delivery bill that his parent had previously incurred. I don’t think that the different hypothetical changes the legalities of it, but I wonder if the people who are saying "screw the credit card company" would have a different view if it was the florist down the block who was looking for payment. If you do have a different view, is it just because in one case the creditor is a big corporation? Or is it because that corporation conducts itself poorly with respect to its customers (charging ridiculous late fees and interest that I agree is exhorbitant)?
TenguPhule
DougJ, stop the spoof.
TenguPhule
The son is not responsible for the debts of the parent.
It ended the moment she died. The bank is shit out of luck.
That they would then try to deceive the son into paying for a debt that HE DOES NOT OWE makes the bank at fault.
Fuck em.
Lesley
How ironic that this clerk – who apparently doesn’t realize he’s a pawn – would act like he’s the CEO of the Bank of Screw You and Your Little Dog Too. It’s sad when minimum wage Americans think they are self-made men.
Mnemosyne
Once again, I feel more than justified in leaving BofA ten years ago. My current bank has some annoying policies in common with most banks, but at least I don’t feel like they’re actively trying to rip me off like BofA did.
My favorite BofA trick: if they receive a deposit and some credits from you on the same day, they will always — without fail — do the credits first, even if you did the deposit first. Then they charge you any overdraft fees, and then they put the deposit in your account, of course taking the overdraft fees out of the deposit. My bank will at least do things in the order they receive them, not hold your deposit until they can figure out a way to charge you for it.
Jrod
You hope that when the time comes, you’ll pay out money you don’t owe to a giant fucking corporation out of the sweetness and light in your heart? Good gods you’re a tool.
Jrod
Oh, also:
Does the florist down the block have a history of constantly trying to screw people out of money by hook or by crook? Does the florist lie on a regular basis in order to scam people out of money they don’t actually owe? Does the florist have a habit of dishonestly shifting numbers around in order to pry as many dollars out of their customers as possible? Did the florist recently receive several billion dollars of taxpayer money?
Like I said, you’re a goddam tool. Stop embarrassing yourself, you bootlicking dumbfuck.
Edit: To clarify, yes, a company’s conduct does in fact have a lot to do with how I’ll respond to them. If my dead mother owed some money to a decent local business, then sure, maybe I’ll pay when I don’t legally owe. You simply can’t compare that to dealing with a scamless, rapacious organization like the BoA.
Nancy Irving
@Potted Plant:
"…I like to think that I’ll make such payments when that time comes."
Please understand that in a similar situation you would have neither a legal NOR a moral obligation to pay off your deceased relative’s balance.
Death cancels all obligations. This has been true for as long as men have lent each other money.
Debtors have been dying insolvent for just as long; creditors consider the losses they take in such cases as one of the costs of doing business.
And like all costs of doing business, this cost is priced into the interest rate your deceased relative was charged for the privilege of borrowing the money.
That is, one percent, or one-half percent, or *some* portion of the interest rate charged, and paid, by your relative during her lifetime was as it were an insurance policy against the chance that she would die without leaving sufficient funds to repay the debt.
So the deceased relative has ALREADY paid an "insurance premium" taking the form of an increase in her interest rate, which "insurance policy" covers the unpaid balance remaining at the time of her death.
Everyone who carries a balance on a credit card pays this "insurance premium"; as with all insurance, only a portion "cash in" their policy.
But all have paid; thus for an heir to consider himself under an obligation to pay off the deceased’s balance would be to pay twice.
Quicksand
@Potted Plant
OK, I’ll feed the troll. Why not.
When the debtor dies without an estate, the debt is gone. Erased. BofA was no longer trying to "collect on a debt"; they were being bastids.
It’s just a cost of doing business. Banks lend money knowing that if the debtor dies without an estate, game over.
But if you want to throw some free money at BofA ‘cuz you love yourself some megabank, knock yourself out!
Potted Plant
Oh, I get it. "Troll" now means "someone who has posted a comment with which I disagree." Good luck with the echo chamber, guys.
Xenos
No. "Troll" means impervious to reality. It is a simple fact, as plain as gravity pulling you to the center of the earth, or the speed of light, that what BoA did was illegal.
Put the shoe on the other foot – say that BoA had $500 in your deceased mother’s name. That is her entire estate. The cost of probating the estate in order to collect the $500 is around $3,000.
The right thing for BoA, would be to give you, her only heir, the money. Would BoA ever do so? Never. It would be illegal. If you started haranguing the tellers about giving you the money, you would be the definition of an asshole. Thus the title to this thread.