If benefactors are that concerned, as I already said, it's up to them to make sure they have enough set aside in a non-beneficiary format to make sure it happens that way. It's not up to heirs to guess the deceased's intentions after the fact.
I'm not "gleefully happy" that creditors get stiffed. These write offs are probably already baked into the prices we all pay for goods and services, medical or otherwise.
But I have no high regard for collections agents, that is true. They can be cruel and start threatening you right out of the gate. They'll tell you lies to scare you into paying a debt that's not yours. Within hours of my mother's death, one did that to me. Sure, I understood that she wasn't happy to hear that there was no money to pay the over $30K my mother owed. I'm sure people lie about that all the time. But there are legal means to recovering such debts that don't involve threatening and trying to scare a then-27-year-old woman still trying to come to grips with the fact that her 48 year-old-mother is gone.
And that was just one of the many I called that day. One creditor told me I was lying. Which is why I don't recommend contacting creditors, if you have no reason to really deal with them.
Not to mention the hassle I got over the relatively minor sum of $45 for a medical bill I truly did owe for services rendered to me when I was 18 and still covered on my father's insurance. I was 19 and I'd not seen any medical bills before getting this past due notice for the $45, billed to my father, listing me as the patient. (My father had originally been billed at his address. He told them I was an adult and to send the bill to me at my address. Which they did, but obviously not promptly.) I called the medical facility to find out what it was all about. I was promptly transferred to the collections department, (which shouldn't have happened), where a man literally screamed at me for several minutes and treated me like I was the worse deadbeat on earth. I wasn't disputing the bill. I had no original billing or insurance statements to back anything up. It had been more than a year since the medical visit. This was my first time handling such a thing for myself. That awful man had me shaking and in tears. Over $45.
It took me such a long time to calm down afterwards. I paid the bill, of course, after asking that he send a bill in my name first. (Otherwise, technically, I'd have been paying my father's bill.) It was a legitimate debt. I was just trying to get the detail on it, that's all.
If you want to talk unethical, I'd say those collection agents fit the bill, pun intended.
Is it really unethical to refuse to pay the debt of another with your own money? No.
Probate is a public matter with court oversight, usually one overseer, and subject to state statutes of limitations on creditor claims. POD/TOD is a private matter. It takes only one person to notify a financial institution of the death. Claim forms get sent to every named beneficiary. A beneficiary isn't even entitled to know what % everyone is getting. Or if there are other assets not passing to them. Only the first person who gets to the decedent's paperwork/files may know the entire picture.
