Michelle Chikaonda “In the Sands of Time” (2021). – Search (bing.com)
Michelle Alipao Chikaonda (she/her/hers) is a nonfiction writer from Blantyre, Malawi. She is currently a graduate student at the University of East Anglia in the UK, studying biography and creative nonfiction at UEA’s School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing.
She has won the Literary Award for Narrative Nonfiction of the Tucson Festival of Books, the Stephen J. Meringoff Award for Nonfiction of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers, and the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Scholarship for writers of color from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
In 2015 she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by the Oracle Fine Arts Review, and in 2020 she was long listed for the inaugural Toyin Falola Prize for emerging African writers; her essay was published in the prize’s anthology, “In the Sands of Time” (2021).
A Philadelphia resident for over 10 years, Michelle has taught regularly with Blue Stoop,
a hub for the Philadelphia literary community; she has also served as a teaching assistant, student mentor and workshop instructor at Mighty Writers, a Philadelphia nonprofit teaching writing and critical thinking to children and teens.
In addition to being a 2019 resident at The Seventh Wave’s Rhinebeck Residency,
she is a Voices of Our Nations [VONA] Workshop fellow, a Tin House Summer Workshop alumna, and has presented at several Association of Writing and Writing Programs [AWP] conferences. A contributing editor for nonfiction at Electric Literature, she is currently published at Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, Catapult, the Broad Street Review,
Business Insider, and Africa is A Country, among others.
5 lessons I learned about debt after my dad’s death that everyone should know.
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My dad died in 2018, and he spent his last 13 days in the ICU — which came with a massive bill. Medical debt like this is one kind of unsecured debt, which goes away if it isn’t covered by the estate. Debt collectors are legally limited in how they are allowed to seek repayment after someone dies.
When my father died of cancer in October 2018 — in a small California town named
Loma Linda — we were sent a massive ICU bill in his name, exactly one week after he’d died. He was admitted to the ICU for 13 days after nearly two years with colon cancer.
My family was still figuring out the expensive logistics of getting his body
repatriated to our home country of Malawi, and the bill felt unreal. It may as well
have been Monopoly money, for how real the implied stacks of banknotes actually felt.
My mother and I laughed bitterly as we sat together at the dinner table, in horrified
awe at the absurdity of our essentially being billed for my father’s death.
The nearly 10 pages of hospital itemizations detailing the technicalities of the final 13 days of my father’s life forced me to realize the intimidating extent of knowledge I did not have about how to handle the financial affairs — especially regarding debt — of the recently deceased. I was even naive enough not to be aware that someone could still be medically billed after they died. That seemed nonsensical, but it is an absolute truth of the financial realities of death in America.
Thus information and research became twin weapons in the months following my father’s funeral. I knew that it would be easy for my family to be financially taken advantage of in that emotionally sensitive period, and I was determined to ensure that did not happen.
As I was the only member of my family who was still a US resident, I spent several painstaking months making phone calls and mailing out copies of my father’s death certificate by myself, as I closed out his American financial affairs.
Related video: Should you be worrying about the US debt limit right now?
In the nearly five years since Dad’s death, I have seen stories both frustrating and heartbreaking about the ways in which bereaved families have not only been financially lost after a loved one’s passing but have been taken advantage of by unscrupulous companies looking to maximize their earnings by razor-thin margins of ethics and legality. Here are what I consider to be the five most important things for people to know about what they most likely do, or do not, owe debtors upon a loved one’s passing.
1. Debt doesn’t go away, but that doesn’t necessarily mean someone has to pay it
Per the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a person’s debts are assumed by their estate — this is simply any money and property left behind after their death —
and any outstanding debts should be paid off by what remains in the person’s estate.
This is handled either by the executor of the estate, named in the deceased person’s will,
or by a government-appointed administrator, if the person died without a will.
There are very limited cases where someone else — such as a spouse or parent — may be
required to pay off certain debts of the deceased. In community property states, for example — where spouses share joint ownership of certain debts undertaken during their marriage — a surviving spouse may be required to pay off certain debts. Confirm state-specific requirements to ensure only what is legally owed is paid.
2. Unsecured debts generally remain the property of the deceased
Unsecured loans include most credit card debt, student loans, personal loans,
and medical bills. According to Experian, these should be handled by the estate
if there is any money remaining to pay those off with.
Even then, whether or not those debts are paid off is determined by the legal order in which estate disbursements are required to be handled. If, for example, a person died in a state where survivors are paid out first, there may be no money remaining in the estate to pay off unsecured debts. Ensure the executor or administrator of the estate confirms specific state requirements before paying.
3. Secured debts must be paid off by someone
The most common secured loans are mortgages and auto loans. If they aren’t paid
by the estate or by someone else, the asset backing them — the house or the car — can
be claimed by the lending institution. Houses and cars often have co-signers for loans,
so it’s important to understand who will be responsible for that debt and what happens,
especially if they plan to maintain use of them after their loved one’s death.
4. Federal student loans are discharged — private student loans usually aren’t
If you die with federal student loan debt, those loans will be discharged. Private lenders, however, may still require the loan be repaid — especially in the case of certain parent-student loans, or other types of co-signed student debt. The estate administrator should contact the lending institution directly to find out what is applicable.
5. The law restricts debt collection after death
The emotional vulnerability of survivors of the deceased can unfortunately make them ideal targets for aggressive debt collectors intent on seeing debts of the deceased repaid by any means necessary. The Federal Trade Commission gives detailed information on what debt collectors may and may not do in order to collect on a loved one’s death, especially to protect against manipulative and potentially deceptive practices targeted at loved ones willing to do whatever they’re made to believe is required to settle a debt.
Handling a loved one’s debts in the wake of their passing can feel daunting, and even retraumatizing. I discovered in the wake of my father’s death just how bureaucratically difficult it is to make the biological fact of a loved one’s death a legal one — especially regarding their debts.
My father’s ICU bill was eventually written off after several letters and phone calls
between myself and the hospital billing office; the last letters I wrote to the hospital were to all of his various medical teams, thanking them for their own intensive care in the worst 13 days of my and my family’s lives. With that, the emotional process of moving forward could finally begin.
Presentations, Podcasts & Press — Michelle A. Chikaonda (michelle chikaonda.work)
As a Black Woman, I’m Learning that Rest Is Resistance = Michelle A. Chikaonda
Fuel Crisis – The Seventh Wave – Michelle A. Chikaonda
https://www.scribd.com/doc/86513629/DNA-in-the-Sands-of-Time
The hourglass is an antiquated timing instrument consisting of two glass chambers connected vertically by a narrow passage which allows sand to trickle from the upper part to the lower by means of gravity. The amount of sand determines the amount of time that passes as the chamber is emptied. The image of the sand being emptied in the hourglass creates a visual metaphor for the limited duration of human life, and for the inevitability
of change in the world as a whole.
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time
In the wake of a mass shooting at a Texas shopping mall
that killed 8 people Saturday,
SiriusXM radio host and former Fox News personality Megyn Kelly accused
advocates of gun control of standing in the way of progress that could cut the
number of gun deaths in America. “Serious q for gun control advocates: and
you’ve failed to effect change,” Kelly wrote on Twitter Saturday.
“Pls face it. You can’t do it, thx to the 2A.
We’re all well aware you don’t like that fact, but fact it is.
What’s next? Must we just stay here sad, concerned, lamenting?
Could we possibly talk about OTHER SOLUTIONS?”
In lieu of gun control, the former Fox News host suggested a myriad of other solutions that might decrease the prevalence of mass shootings, including mental health interventions — quipping that this would require something “real” and “not the BS we now do” — as well as “greater willingness to lock people up (w/protocols in place for civil libs) who are deemed to be threats [and] fortification of soft targets, coordination of media response to not lionize shooters.”
“We need a mental health facility that is secure (guards/locked down) but still humane enough that a loving parent would send her kid there, for one,” Kelly continued. “Right now parents who know they’re raising the next school shooter have next to no recourse.”
While little was known about the shooter in the Texas incident, Kelly suggested that “mental health interventions” and a “greater willingness to lock people up,” along with the “fortification of soft targets” were issues deserving of attention instead of limiting access to guns and a possible assault weapons ban. By suggesting mental illness is linked to mass shootings, Kelly was perpetuating a myth that’s been disproven in several scientific studies.
The FBI, which studied the individuals responsible for 160 active shooter incidents.
Between 2000 and 2013, noted the “erroneous inclination to assume that anyone who commits an active shooting must be de facto mentally ill,” and found that “only 25% of
the active shooters…were known to have been diagnosed by a mental health professional with a mental illness of any kind prior to the offense.” That figure is roughly the same for Americans at large, with about 1 in 4 adults suffering from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year.
Mass killings in US: Database shows mass casualty shootings in America.
Number of mass shootings in the U.S. 1982-2023 | Statista
The nation’s 200th mass shooting of 2023 (msn.com)
Kidneys Care: Ask Health Professionals (msn.com)
Megan Kelly Gun Control – Search (bing.com)