<prompt> Human: My mother and I are not on the best terms, and not really in contact. Historically, shes been terrible with money and has racked up a terrifying amount of debt. She was fore closed on when I was in college and took out a loan in my name without my permission to get back on her feet. This has since been handled out of court I tried to press charges and the police shamed 19 year old me for wanting to do that to my own mother - I shouldnt have let them talk me down and its set to drop off my credit in about six months, I believe. I cut ties pretty definitively after that.I have recently found out through another relative that my mother has now racked up an enormous amount of credit card debt - somewhere in the range of 40k, in addition to a giant mortgage- and is also now having serious health issues and is probably only going to compound that debt with medical bills.This relative informed me that she was telling me so that I would be prepared because this was the legacy my mother was leaving me and she the relative thought I was only fair I know. Im having trouble finding a definitive answer by googling, so... am I liable for this debt of my mothers once she dies? She has no savings, she lied paycheck to paycheck, its not like there will be anything when she dies to pay it off with. The relative that called me seems completely convinced that it will be on me to pay off her insane debts. Is that true? I can go my entire life making smart choices and never carrying balances and my mother can screw all my financial planning up by racking up insane debts and then dying? Tl;dr: Do I inherit liability for my mothers debt when she dies?Assistant: Are you sure she hasnt continued to accrue debt under your name?Human: Ive been monitoring my credit obsessively since the first - and only - time. She is well aware that if she tries it again I will actually press charges.  <response>: It happened to a friend of mine, this was before the Internet in the early 1990s. He and a friend had both been dating the same woman and living with her. He got kicked out of the apartment so he called to have everything in his name transferred to her name. But she called and said she was his wife and had it transferred back into his name. They ran up utility bills, long distance bills, and then moved to Ohio after getting married. My friend was stuck with the bills and was never able to pay them off. In 1999 he killed himself after losing a job and his mother dying of cancer, etc. 