Deceased with debt - spouse responsibility?

[Patters86]

Hi,

sadly my mother passed away and it transpires she has a lot of debt.
She lived in a mortgage free house jointly owned with my dad (they are married).
She has her own bank account with a large overdraft which is maxed out.
There is a joint account with a smaller overdraft which is maxed out.
There are also some credit cards (unknown at present what the total debt on these is).
She had a funeral insurance plan but no other life insurances or anything.
She has no cars or valuable assets that can be sold.

so the question is how does my dad go about sorting this and what debt is liable to be paid? The only way he could access any funds would be to sell the house which obviously he doesn’t want to do given it’s his home.

This is all very stressful at a time when we could do without it.

Thank you

@Collaborate is right. He has given the reference to the legislation and described the process. Yes, on the death of one co-owner in a joint tenancy that owner's interest passes to the surviving co-owner, but the Insolvency Act 1986 allows the deceased's creditors to effectively reverse that.

I would just add that often some credit companies insure against the death of the debtor. In that situation they wouldn't be concerned about chasing the debt.

IANAL but I have read this out of interest. The variety of answers is very confusing for the OP, even though well intentioned.

If the house if jointly owned (not tenants in common), what's the answer? Can the debt be recouped from the deceased's jointly owned property value?

Yes - on an application being made by a creditor to the court withon 5 years of death.

From my experience with my dad, although it may be a lot of debt, it's spread around different cards and banks.

So it may not be worth their while to try to recover it, definitely not to the extent of seizing property from a bereaved spouse.

No one asked what sort of joint ownership my mum had. My dad had some assets of his own such as an old car. None were interested and I got the impression it was easier to write everything off than do the work of recovering a few hundred pounds.