Disclaimer: As far as I know, I’m not going to die soon. I’m asking this question in case that changes someday.
So I was just thinking about this and thought it might be a good idea to leave your family some money while fucking over the bank on your way out. The creditors would go after your worthless estate only to find the recently purchased assets are missing, but you’re already dead and can’t be charged with fraud. And if you do some decent opsec, they can’t implicate your family either.
I assume without laundering the money, your family would not be able to use it on anything big. And your available credit wouldn’t be enough to make a massive quality of life improvement for your loved ones. But even if they only spend it on groceries and hobbies for a few years, it would make a nice goodbye gift.
Am I missing anything that makes this a horrible or unacceptably risky idea?
Do a fuckton of research before hand. Do everything in your power to keep the research anonymous. Find trusted relatives that you will give explicit verbal and written instructions to… possibly with the addition of “burn these documents after you’ve read them or they are no longer useful” instructions.
The laws change depending on country, state, type of debit left, (probably) what type of estate planning was done, and quite probably the amount of debit left to be dealt with by the executor of the deceased’s estate.
Even if the original holders of the debit don’t try to collect it (the CC companies) they will still have no problem selling the debit to a collection agency (even if the local laws say that a dead person’s CC debit dies with them) and they can harass your family. It won’t matter that it might be illegal to try to collect the debit, they know that most people can’t get a lawyer to counter the harassment. So part of the research will need to be about dealing not only with debit owed to the original source but any following owners of the debit as well.
What are the statute of limitations on collection debits incurred by the deceased? What are the specifics?
Don’t forget to figure out how to “sell” the precious metals you are putting in your stash. I know nothing about it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there some rules (like with buying Money Orders) that selling less than $xx.xx of precious metals doesn’t need to be reported to some Authorities but selling more than $xx.xx in a given time period does. Knowing where to look for the most up to date “value” of the metals, where to sell them, how much to expect to lose in the transaction, at what amounts can they get straight cash that isn’t reported at the time of sale and what amounts would be reported or only allowed in digital transactions (instantly creating a paper trail to your family).