Do you remember your wedding day?  Think back to your vows you made to one another, especially “through sickness and in health.”  When you promise to spend your lives together, you are also promising to provide and support the other person, making sure all their needs are met and expenses paid. These needs are recognized under state law as necessaries, which include, but are not limited to, medical bills.  Under North Carolina law, medical bills incurred during a marriage are considered the responsibility of both spouses.  If you find that the majority of your debts are medical bills and the expenses were applied during your marriage, both spouses should consider filing bankruptcy to avoid any further responsibility to the debt and creditor.

What if you are separated?  As long as you can prove that you were legally separated from your spouse at the time services were rendered, then the necessities doctrine should not apply.  To avoid confusion or personal responsibility of an ex-spouse, it is wise to provide the legal paperwork proving you are separated from each other before services and expenses were occurred.

The necessities doctrine is important in the world of bankruptcy because even if one spouse files bankruptcy, if there are significant medical bills, a creditor can still come after the other spouse to pay those medical bills. We always encourage a married couple where one, or both, of the spouses have significant medical bills to both file bankruptcy. This ensures the debts are completely wiped out and cannot be collected by a creditor.