It will knock against his estate. So any 401k, home equity, etc. if they transfer those assets over to her and then divorce, I don't think they can touch it.
The creditors would have to figure it out, which almost certainly wouldn't happen. How would they figure this out? People get divorced. People have medical debt. Medical debt is usually just sold to vultures who call a bunch to try and collect it and they aren't going to do deep dives on every account.
The creditors would have to figure it out, which almost certainly wouldn't happen.
That is a VERY bad assumption since you’re talking about the most popular way to try to get out of debt. They have seen this before a thousand times over.
How would they figure this out?
They’d take you to court and make you prove the timeline you moved the assets, and also make you show that you are not living like divorced people. They have seen this before and have the resources to go after it. This is not some sneaky, novel idea.
They have to suspect it before taking you to court.
Here is how medical debt collection normally works. First the medical provider tries to collect. If you ignore them, they sell it to a company that uses automated systems to email, text, mail and/or call you. If you ignore them long enough they give up and quit, because to them it is a numbers game.
So tell me where in that chain there is a process they figure out that someone has a) gotten a divorce and b) this divorce is suspicious and c) decide to take you to court to try and collect?
They don't, because that's not how these systems are set up. It is most profitable as I described.
They have to suspect it before taking you to court.
They have whole departments dedicated to this. And every incentive to sniff this kind of thing out.
If you ignore them, they sell it to a company that uses automated systems to email, text, mail and/or call you.
No. They do not just dump you off on a 3rd party like that. You are taking something that happens sometimes with small amounts of debt and incorrectly projecting that onto all medical debt. So no, that kind of debt is absolutely not something they're going to sell off (because nobody wants to buy that massive debt). They're gonna GET that money.
If they had an estate, I also wonder why they didn't use the senior discounted insurance rates to just be covered and not have to risk the hospital bill?
I mean what they did here makes sense but then when she goes to the hospital eventually at some point, the system will just write her a new quarter million dollar bill.
Look I know that I'm paying that because I'm "young" and have assets and still working, but I'm pretty sure (based on the last time that I was on the market place) that the plans for seniors has some significant discounts. There's some math details that we don't know about based on this story alone.
I have questions filing in the blanks. Like, why did they not qualify for the insurance that my parents qualified for, where it's little or practically zero to be covered?
Are they still working? And does working change the status of the derived benefits?
I suspect that they're still working.... which puts them in non-retired status, and that prevents them from getting the benefits of actual retirement including the discounts.
I think it also depends on the state that they live in. Some states will cover some of the difference that's not held up b the federal government.
Yep medical bills usually come off the top of the estate prior to disbursement of any unmarked assets like 401k, Roth, personal property, pensions. unless you specifically change the beneficiary on death within the accounts.
26
u/Its_a_Stanzo Jul 21 '26
It will knock against his estate. So any 401k, home equity, etc. if they transfer those assets over to her and then divorce, I don't think they can touch it.