I enjoy these posts because we need to fight back and reading them may help us know how. My firm belief on any bill that you get for dead relatives is that the collector is simply out of luck. You are not responsible for their bills but collection will swear you are and they are trying to get laws passed saying this. At one place I worked a woman there was being harassed to pay her dead mother's bills as they claimed she was "head of her mother's estate." I talked to her for a while and the next time they called she told them "what estate do you mean - she lived in a mobile home and was on Social Security." The hapless collection agency never called her again. Yes dear. They will try and trick you.

A collection agency keeps sending registered letters to my son's house, attempting to collect on unpaid bills accrued at a different address, but by the deceased former owner of his house. They are threatening in nature. My son has tried sending them back on numerous occasions, with the words "former occupant deceased" written on the front. They don't stop. We're not sure what the next step will be.

3 years after my FIL died I got a tax bill addressed to him for his car, (our house was never his address) which was his only '"estate" and had been sold right after his death.
The bill had been sold to a collection agency, which I guess is common, no doubt letters to him had gone to the dead-letter office.
The car had been through probate and anything due had been taken care of in the same town the tax bill came from as is required before it could be sold.
To be nice, I called to inform them of the death and this Very pushy guy kept yammering that I had to send him a death certificate (which any such information is public and available to all).
Really ugly about it.
I told him, okay, I Would give him Dad's current address, (not having the ashes, he had been scattered as per his request) which this moron then developed an "I knew you were lying" attitude, and i gave him the funeral home address and phone #.

I’ve got collection calls on my cell for some guy I don’t know. I’ve had this number for a long time now. Kept telling them there was no one here by that name. It’s like they don’t believe you. Very frustrating. They finally stopped.