What happens to your debt after you die?

Thankfully, you can’t take it with you. Your debt, that is. When you depart this world, your debt stays behind.

That may be reassuring to a lot of consumers. According to a new survey of 1,004 U.S. adults from CreditCards.com, 1 in 5 Americans believe his or her debt will never be paid off.

But less reassuring: Your debt could cause headaches for your descendants, depending how you handle things — and how they handle everything.

The general rule of thumb is that if your loved one has a lot of debt, and there’s plenty of money to pay it off, the debt will be paid off, according to Tim Gagnon, a professor of accounting at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University in Boston.

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