On the face of it, yes: it is quite sad that money is priority. But I think it's less that money is a priority, but more that his family's safety and security is a priority. By leaving his wife with this epic mortgage to deal with on her own he'd make her life after he's gone very difficult, so he wants to make it as easy for her as possible.

Reading this makes me glad we both have life insurance that pays off half the mortgage in case of our untimely death. That way, whoever is left behind will only have to deal with half the financial burden.

>I thought nearly the same. But my thought went more along the lines of "it's sad that this person's highest priorities are all about money".

You make it sound like it's his fault, or he wants money to hoard it or spend it.

He wants it for his family. His highest priorities are having them secure.

> You make it sound like it's his fault,

and in some sense, it is. When you do something as big as buying a house and taking on a huge mortgage, a premature death simply is something you have to think about. You can chose to insure your family against that (live insurance), or you can chose to take the risk. Or you can not think about it, and let life chose for you.

Even now, selling the house and/or car (and worrying less about money) is an option. It's not a popular option, but my point is that there are options, and that means that there is also choice in the order of priorities.

> or he wants money to hoard it or spend it.

That's totally not how I see it, and I'm sorry if it came across that way.

He has four kids. He should have life insurance, and he should have gotten it when he first had kids and presumably was fairly young so that the rates would be inexpensive.

Even if it wasn't for the mortgage or the van, you would want your partner to have sufficient resources to make rent.

A level term policy can often be had for as little as $30/month and it would have been more than adequate to cover the $250,000 in debt and final expenses. The service (assuming 4% and 30/5 years for the house/car) on this debt is probably about $1500, which means he should probably be able to afford an extra $30.

Debts are generally not something you can leave to your family. They're generally expunged, barring joint debts and things like that.

So run it all onto credit cards, by all means.

I don't think any country works that way. Either you take the inheritance and that's the whole package with debts, or you get nothing.

Also, that's different for married couples. Of course that depends on countries and whether you have a prenup or not, but married couple usually share their assets and their depts. Which means that if one of the spouse take a debts, the other is responsible for it too.

Either way it's very likely his mortgage was a joint debt. In France you're forced to take a life insurance for a mortgage, so it's unlikely someone will get in his situation. Even when it's not mandatory everyone should take one, because even if dying young sucks, it can happen.

In Netherland, you can choose to refuse an inheritance. If you accept it, you get everything, including the debts; if you refuse it, you get nothing, not even small trinkets with sentimental value.

Though in the case of a mortgage, losing the debt also means losing the house. I totally understand wanting your family to be able to keep the house. Losing your dad/husband and also having to leave the house with all the memories of him, would suck double.

> you can choose to refuse an inheritance...accept [...] and get everything, including the debts...refuse [...] and get nothing, not even small trinkets

why couldn't you (as the inheritee?) "throw away" all assets prior to dying, then let your benifactors refuse the debts (which is all that's left)? Who actually enforces that you can't dispose of your assets (in a way that benefits your son/daughter/spouse), then refuse the debt?

Government enforces it. I don't know how exactly it is in the USA, but in my country there is "land registry", which is maintained and updated by legal courts. Within the registry, every land/house/flat ownership is noted and this registry is also the final instance whenever there are legal battles regarding ownership.

Whenever you take a loan for your house, a bank will want to add a note to the registry that it has first claim to your property in case of not paying, premature death, and so on. So one cannot just give his house to his relatives, as the court will block the transfer when it will see in the registry that the bank has primary claim to it. To do something like that, one must make a deal with the bank that new owner will either pay up the loan or take it on his name.

I believe there's a limit to how much you can give away to your heirs while still alive. Probably if you give more, you have to pay extra tax. And I can imagine that if you gave away a lot just before your death and ended up with a lot of debt, debt collectors may still be able to get the gifts back, but I'm not entirely sure about that; I'm no expert on this.

It seems like in the USA, gifts to a spouse are exempted from the gift tax[1]. I don't know about USA, but here (Finland) any unusually large gifts given just prior to death are considered a part of inheritance.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_tax_in_the_United_States#N...

Not sure what the US reality on that is. In Portugal, you can and do inherit debt, though the monetary value of the inherited debt can never exceed that of the inherited assets.

In the US, debt is generally tied to an entity called your estate (your financial entity post death, basically). Debt - for example let's say you have a big credit card debt - will be paid by the assets of your estate. Different types of debt often have different priorities (when it comes time for the executor or court to decide what gets paid first or last). As your estate is settled, the debts usually get taken care of from the assets (basically a simple subtraction matter). If there aren't enough assets in the estate to pay the debts, then the creditor is almost always out of luck.

Just to be clear, this system is essentially identical to "debt is inherited, but never in an amount greater than the value of the inherited assets".