Moms bills

When my Mom passes can her previous nursing facilities collect her unpaid bills from her estate? She only has a couple of small insurance policies. Her condo has a reverse mortgage with no equity left. There is also about 5k owed in common charges and the same in back utilities.
Will any of us be responsible for any of these bills?

You personally will not be responsible for the bills.

Her estate, however, will be if they file as a creditor of her estate.

When bills are paid from Mom's estate are they given any type of priority? I would like to start paying some of them now. I can only pay a little at a time. I'm at a loss who I should be paying first. Pre-arranged burial, nursing home bills, condo bills, utilities?

If you are not the executor of her estate ( also called personal representative) then you have no authority to disperse funds from her estate. Your mother is still alive? I would not recommend paying the bills----I mean, they will be glad to take her money, but you don't know which creditor will actually bring an action against the estate. I would wait to find out-----and since you have no legal right to do so, I would not . ( do you have power of attorney?----POA ends with the persons death, so being the POA isn't the same as being executor).

Does mom have a will?

You may want to read this article: Creditor Claims on an Estate Lawyer

I do have POA and my Mom has a NYsarc trust. I understand that the POA is void upon death, will the trust pay her preplan burial arrangements?

With POA, perhaps you should go ahead and prepay the burial. Is the nursing home bill subsidized by Medicaid already or is that still to come? If so, Medicaid will take whatever charges accrued... but I sense that she still has assets that would prevent Medicaid from kicking in. The FIRST creditor to file will be paid first in some states, and the executor of her estate is charged with the duty to publish her death and call for creditors to present their bills. This could take some time and it appears there is not much left in any case.

The burial prepayment would be the first thing I would pay... but then I'd leave the rest in her estate... you never know, in these economic times, there could be bankruptcies that would wipe out some of her creditors. While they could still come after her assets at her death, that could be quite a long time, so she could still escape having those bills come due. Obviously, the government programs will always be there with their palms up to take her assets to the limit of her indebtedness for Medicaid.