When You Receive a Demand for the Deceased's Debts After the 3 Months Have Passed

The day you received the demand may be the starting point of a new deadline. Pin down the dates first.

• Keep the collection notice or complaint with its envelope to show the date you received it, and write that down along with today's date.
• If the papers came from a court, check whether it is a payment order (지급명령) or a complaint. You must respond to a payment order within 2 weeks of receiving it, and to a complaint within 30 days.
• If you have not yet used the Safe Inheritance (안심상속) search, apply now; if you did, find those results again. Once 1 year has passed from the last day of the month of death, the combined search is no longer available and you must check with each agency separately.
• If you used or disposed of any of the deceased's property after the death, write down what, when and for how much.
• Gather materials showing that you had lost contact with the deceased, or that it was hard to know the state of their finances.

• Promising a debt collector on the phone that you will 'pay a little at a time', or paying part of the debt
• Ignoring court papers because 'it isn't my debt anyway' (if they become final, they have the same effect as a judgment)
• Hurrying to sell the deceased's remaining property or moving it into a family member's name
• Filing a new renunciation because the deadline has passed (at this point renunciation will not be accepted; only limited acceptance is possible)

Civil Act (민법) Article 1019(3) provides that an heir who, without gross negligence, did not know within 3 months that the estate's debts exceeded its assets and whose inheritance became a simple acceptance (단순승인), may take limited acceptance within 3 months from the day they learned that fact. This covers both cases where the inheritance became a simple acceptance because nothing was done for 3 months and cases where it was treated as one because estate property was disposed of.

The most important point is that you 'did not know without gross negligence'. You need to explain specifically, for example, that you had no contact with the deceased for a long time, that no mail arrived that would have revealed the deceased's assets or debts, or that the debt did not show up in the search results. On the other hand, if you had already received several collection demands, or lived with the deceased and could have known about the debts, it is hard to have the filing accepted.

If the inheritance occurred while you were a minor and became a simple acceptance, you can take limited acceptance within 3 months from the day, after becoming an adult, that you learned the debts were larger (paragraph 4 of the same Article).

Even if you withdrew and spent deposits or sold the car after the death, you can still take special limited acceptance (특별한정승인), because the law includes cases that became a simple acceptance through disposal. In return, you must list the property disposed of and its value in the filing, and when settling, you must pay creditors that value in addition to the remaining property, in proportion to their claims. Hiding money you spent can turn it back into a simple acceptance, so being honest in the filing is actually safer.

Special limited acceptance is filed with the family court that has jurisdiction over the deceased's last address. In addition to the documents for ordinary limited acceptance, attach materials explaining how you learned of the debts late, and if you have already disposed of estate property, submit a list of it with its value (Civil Act Article 1030(2)).

If court papers have arrived, you must respond to that case separately from the filing. For a payment order, file an objection within 2 weeks to move it into a lawsuit; for a complaint, file an answer within 30 days stating that you have filed for special limited acceptance, and later submit the written decision accepting it. Once it is accepted, we argue for the judgment to include the words 'up to the value of the estate'.

After acceptance, you go through public notice, notice to creditors and proportional payment, as with ordinary limited acceptance. The difference is that the value of property already disposed of must be added to the remaining property for payment.

Jisan Law sets out by date what you knew and when, prepares a written explanation showing there was no gross negligence, and handles the special limited acceptance filing together with any payment orders or lawsuits already received. If you disposed of property, we also look at how to state its value.

Once 2 weeks have passed, a payment order becomes hard to challenge. If it has been a few days since you received the papers, take photos of them and send them to us first through the chat on this page.