Afaik if you accept the inheritance, you accept all of it. Normally the solution is to reject it, at least if you know the estate’s in the red, but you can not pick and choose.

We’ve done this for the inheritance of one of my uncles who died severely in debt, as well as his wife and children, everyone of his sibling, nieces, and nephews, had to refuse the inheritance when they came of age. For a few years that was basically the traditional birthday: eat cakes, get presents, sign letter telling the bank you don’t want that debt.

And apparently some states have filial responsibility statutes which makes children responsible regardless, which seems beyond fucked.

Luckily your family catched it. Sounds similar enough to German law, so. But I have honestly no idea about the details. We do have the situation so, that children can, and are, be hold liable for their parents living costs. E.g. when the parents are under the last tier of social security (Hartz IV is really fucked up not just in that regard) or in a retirement home of sorts. Which sucks, because if your parents abused you, courts can still force you to sustain them.

Beyond refusing the inheritance, could this be avoided by leaving the inheritance to the state in a will? In that case, would the state inherit the debt?

With proper estate planning, you can pass on assets while leaving the debt in a state where it can't be pursued.

Again something the affluent can do, those most at risk of being in private or consumer debt aren't probably even aware of all of that.

This is not just something for the well to do.

I have experience with government run elder care programs and the (privately run) estate planning that goes with it. Shoehorning all your worth into a trust (there's more to it than that) is something that not so affluent people commonly have to do in order to qualify for state run elder assistance programs/subsidies that they don't qualify for and couldn't afford themselves (fixed income) because their money is tied up in a non-liquid asset (their house). This isn't something just for the affluent. Basically if you own your own house or have a lot of equity in it it's what you have to do unless you want to give the state your house in exchange for a free van ride to the senior center or 7hr/wk of in-home care.

And before you assume everywhere is like SV and that owning your own house makes you affluent by default I would like to state that my experience is on the other side of the country.

Literally anything can be made legal. The people who want the money can lobby legislators until they get a law they want passed. Nothing stops it. Lobbying is legal, and lawmakers can make any law they want. They can even make a law that allows corporations to abuse people (which is weird since corporations are people, but we don't generally allow people to abuse people)

Thanks for writing this. Many times when people ask "Is it legal?" they miss this nuance. What they often mean instead is "Is it moral?" It is a great accomplishment of the political class to have manufactured this ambiguity.