I've written about in my other posts over the past few weeks that my
mother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung (and stomach) cancer this past
month. She'll be beginning treatment within the next week (we meet with
her doctors tomorrow for a final discussion prior to beginning a
clinical trial).

Today I went with her to the Social Security office to see about filing
a claim to get her her social security benefits early (she's only 56).
Surprisingly, it was a fairly pleasant experience (my mother's pain
notwitstanding). The social worker filed three different claims on
behalf of my mother, and said they would be "expedited", meaning she
would be receiving her payments, and medical coverage, very soon.

In the few weeks now that I've been reading this NG, all discussion has
been about treatment and other medical things in relation to cancer.
Hopefully my question below is not too off-topic, however trivial it
really may be in the grand scheme of things as affected by stage 4 lung
cancer:

My mother has quite a bit of credit card debt (I'm still not sure just
how much, but I will talk with her about it this weekend. I'm guessing
in the $5000 to $8000 range). It is all credit card debt (specifically
department store credit cards I believe). She does have a car loan but
amazingly she purchased a "pay it off if I can't work" type of insurance
policy for the car when she got the loan, and when she called the lender
they told her to not send another payment and that she is covered and
they will be sending out a form for her to fill out.

She'll soon be receiving a monthly social security check of about $1100.
She'll also have medical coverage through either social security or from
the state (welfare) once her employer-sponsored health coverage runs out
in a couple of months. She no longer works due to the pain and 60mg of
morphine she is on.

She has zero in terms of assets. She lives with my brother, so no house.
Her only asset is the car, an inexpensive Hyundai. However she does have
this credit card debt. And she was asking me today what she should do
about it. My brother immediately snapped back that she shouldn't pay
anything, and to just ignore it and let him deal with the creditors who
will be calling his house (where my mom lives). He said he will tolerate
the calls/harassment from them, and will change his phone number as many
times as necessary to evade them.

My mom doesn't feel comfortable doing this. I don't think it's the best
way to approach this either, but am not sure. I searched the web tonight
looking for a "Should I pay debts if terminally ill?" type of website
advice, but can find nothing.

My thinking is that she should be proactive and let the creditors know
that she is terminally ill and that she will not be paying them and
that's that. But as I type that it seems to be a dumb thing to do. I
would gladly pay for my mother to see a lawyer about this and file
bankruptcy, but there are two problems with that: 1. she would never let
me pay for it and I don't think she should spend what little money she
has on it, and 2. I'm guessing she'd have to go to court and put up with
other aggravation, not to mention the creditors calling anyway.

I'll be honest here - I have no concern about the ethical ramifications
of her not paying off the debts to these high interest department store
credit cards. And faced with the decision of whether to spend a good
portion of her monthly fixed income going forward on either the things
she wants to spend it on, or on credit card payments, I know my mother
is looking to do the former.

I'm sorry to bring up such a horrible topic. But she wants advice, and
I'm not quite sure what to do at this point. I will talk to a lawyer
soon regardless, but thought I'd try to get an idea of what other
families in this situation have done and how it turned out for them.

Sincerely,

mark