Dear Liz: My wife is in the process of being named executor for her late sister’s estate. There are several medical bills, including some that have been sold to collection agencies. Our understanding is that any negotiations or settlements should be done with those agencies as opposed to the original medical organization. Is this correct in general as well as in probate situations?
Answer: If a bill has been sold to a collection agency, that’s the entity your wife will have to contact. However, not all medical bills are sold. Sometimes collection agencies work on behalf of healthcare providers. When that’s the case, your wife may want to contact the original provider.
As executor, your wife can and should hire an attorney to advise her on administering her sister’s estate. The estate will pay the cost for this advice and your wife will receive helpful, personalized counsel on dealing with every aspect of being an executor, including this one, which is particularly fraught.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently warned that some medical debt collectors are violating federal law by inflating bills, trying to collect on debts that aren’t owed, demanding payment for services insurance has already covered and lying about consumers’ rights to contest bills. The attorney can help your wife verify the bills are accurate and negotiate settlements.
When my father-in-law passed away a few years ago, my husband was the executor of his will. While it wasn’t a complicated estate, we found great comfort in simply hiring an estate attorney to take care of the whole thing. We got documents to sign every so often, and she kept us up to date on all the court filings and everything else. It wasn’t free, of course, but it would have been hours of our time trying to do things we didn’t know how to do, didn’t even know we were supposed to do. I recommend it!