Guide

Death Debts: What Must Be Paid, and In What Order

The signer of a small-estate affidavit takes on a personal duty: pay the estate's debts in the order the law sets, or owe them yourself. Here is that order, in plain words.

Nobody inherits a debt personally — but an estate's debts are paid out of the estate before heirs receive anything, and the person who signs a small-estate affidavit promises the law they will do it in the right order. Pay the wrong person first, out of your own pocket, is the one real danger of the affidavit path — which is why this site prints the duty inside every affidavit verdict, not in fine print.

The usual order

1. Secured debts stay with their property. A mortgage follows the house; a car loan follows the car. The estate does not "pay them off" ahead of others unless it sells the property.
2. The costs of settling — funeral and burial, the last illness, and the expenses of administration — come early in nearly every state's order.
3. Taxes and government claims — final income taxes, and in some states Medicaid estate-recovery claims — hold a statutory place in line.
4. Ordinary unsecured debts — credit cards, personal loans, medical balances not tied to the last illness — share what remains, in proportion if there is not enough.
5. Heirs last. Only what survives the line above is distributed.

The two rules that protect you

• If the debts may exceed the assets, stop. An insolvent estate belongs in court, where a judge runs the claims process and the shortfall is the creditors' problem, allocated by law. The checker routes insolvent estates to full probate for exactly this reason.
• Collectors have deadlines; you have rights. A creditor who misses the state's claim window loses the claim against the estate. Never pay a collector who calls before you know the estate's full picture — grief is a sales environment for debt buyers, and "your mother would have wanted this paid" is not a legal category.

The kit's creditor module walks this order state by state, with the worksheet that lines the debts up before a dollar moves.

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