Can anyone help with this nightmare? | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone help with this nightmare?

10 pointscmejia255 comments

The hospital bills racked up by my Stepdad before he died were just under $450k. The hospital placed a lien against his estate for this entire amount. I called 2 different attorneys, and both said that this was legal, and neither of them believed that they could get the payoff balance reduced by more than 50%, and 50% would be the very best. There must be a better solution out there. I welcome all suggestions please.

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You can have your nightmare fixed. I am a financial planner in Louisiana. I got an email from my association detailing what Credit CRB does as far as debt negotiation/estate liens/and more. My sister had been in serious condition for 17 days from a bad car accident, with major burns over her body. 4 days after receiving that email my sister died and we soon came to find out that a $890k medical lien was placed against her estate. The estate was worth about $1.7M and there were children, her husband, and other relatives and friends that were in the will (even simple mementos were at risk of being forced to be auctioned off). Her estate attorney who helped draft the will recommended Creditcrb.com to negotiate this outlandish supposed debt. It took almost 6 months, but the debt settled for $85k. What a huge relief.

Why shouldn't it be legal to charge his bills to his estate?

Often estates don't have much if any money and that's the end of the story.

I don't think HN is a good place for this discussion, but anywhere you discuss will need to know if there's a surviving spouse, minor children, approximate size of the estate, if there was medical insurance (or if there should have been --- if Stepdad was eligible for government coverage (VA, Medicare, maybe Medicaid), sometimes that be added retroactively), etc.

> I called 2 different attorneys, and both said that this was legal

Keep calling until you get a different answer?

You're not going to find better advice on the internet, let alone Hacker News.

If he was on Medicare then that should be where they bill and against his supplemental insurance.

Find a few more attorneys that specialize in this area, you may need more than one to dive into the details with you and select the best one you can find.

/r/legaladvice ?

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