Q: Do I owe payment to a creditor for my deceased father from 4 years ago.
My dad, who was a lifelong resident of GA, had a small trucking company in Savannah that he liquidated and closed in January of 2015. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer and passed a year and a half later on 6/17/2016. As his executor, and a resident of Florida since 1983, I honchoed his meager estate through probate, including the publication of a notice to creditors in the local newspaper. All known bills were paid and the estate’s remaining assets were sold and the proceeds were eventually distributed to the heirs in his will. This past week, four and a half years after his death, I received a collection letter at my home in FL addressed to my deceased father’s trucking company. The letter was from a collection agency on behalf of Comcast. I think he may have used them for phone and internet at his trucking company. No amount due was cited in the letter. Closing his company didn’t involve me and I was executor only for his personal estate. Can I be held liable for this debt?
A:
I cannot see how you could be held personally liable for this alleged debt. You were not a personal guarantor of the company's obligations to Comcast. However, it is possible that if he guaranteed the obligations, that his obligations were binding on his heirs.
At most, the statute of limitation on a written contract is 5 years from the date that the last event occurs to start the limitation clock. Generally usually normally, that last event is a payment or charge. IF the last payment OR billable transaction occurred before January 2016, then the statute of limitation ran about a year ago. If the last transaction occurred before that, the statute ran before January 2020. Of course, it's possible that the account kept billing every month until Comcast terminated the service for lack of payment. Is it possible that the account kept billing into 2017? Only you would know. But based on nothing but the facts that you've related here and the assumption that the phone contract was terminated well before 2017, it seems that the SOL ran a year ago, and there's no way that you could be held liable.
Additionally, I believe their claim is barred against your dad's estate under the probate rules (I doubt Georgia's probate rules are dramatically different from Florida's). I feel reasonably certain that you can tell this agency to pound sand.
Bruce Alexander Minnick agrees with this answer
1 user found this answer helpful
A: No. But just to be sure, I would send these debt collectors a copy of the final closing document(s) in your father's estate file kept at the courthouse.
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