Here’s a funny tidbit. I had power of attorney for my dad’s accounts which I would pay his bills. When he was dying in the hospital I when to his safety deposit box and deposited his savings bonds into his account so my sister would not have to deal with this once she became executor of his estate. He passed. My sister became executor and handled that end, asking me to handle his taxes for the previous year since he died just before the new year. Not a problem as I had been doing his taxes for years. Approximately 9 months later I receive a letter from the IRS questioning why I hadn’t claimed his savings bonds on my taxes. Luckily I had all the paperwork to show that the savings bonds were in his account and claimed on his taxes. I can only imagine the mess if I wasn’t on good terms with my sister. I enjoy your channel very much. Thank you.
My dad had a revokable trust, a bank account was part of the trust and i having complete control of the trust. The bank wanted me to provide a death certificate to release the funds to me, even though they had a copy of the trust and that shouldn’t have been necessary but you need the death certificate for other things so no big deal!
My name was on all of my mother's bank accounts, her car, and her house. I had a power of attorney for both healthcare and finances. I actually sold her house even before her death using the POA. Selling the car was even easier. She had signed the title beforehand and I added my signature when selling it. Regarding joint bank accounts, I closed all of them except one shortly after her death. I never told the banks that she had died, I simply closed them and moved the money to an individual account in my name. The final account I kept open to pay her final expenses and receive her last tax refund. Once all of that was taken care of, I closed it and that was that.
Banks do not freeze joint accounts. Example: John OR Jane Doe. Either one, dead or alive, can do whatever they want with the money, at least in my state of MN. Possibly varies by state, but I think this rule is pretty much universal.
All my dad and moms assets were in a revokable trust, the house, car, bank accounts. I had control of their SS and Medicare, everything. Used tax form 1099k to distribute the assets to my five siblings. Everything went as planned. It was tough on my sibling in that they had no control, but i did everything, from doctor appointment to nursing homes. It wasn’t because of me wanting to do it all, but they couldn’t do it, but wanted some power, but had none. We overcame that after my parents were gone, but only because i didn’t benefit from it, taking only when i needed to. Don’t know if it was correct in the way my parents planned it, but in the end it worked out and my siblings regretted not having helped more, but you never know!
@@user-ho3dk4pg8y Mine was frozen. You want to know what is horrible? Knowing you can't access any cash and need to pay mortgage and buy food for your kids.
A friend whose mother was terminally ill went to her mother's bank with her mother and setup joint access so that she would have access after her mother's death. A few months later, her mother died, but the bank froze the account anyway! They said that it was not setup for access correctly. My friend resorted to going to the local TV news channel and the bad publicity finally got someone at the bank to unfreeze the account.
Moral of the real world: Most people are not going to do that so we need to change the laws to make it clear that for joint accounts, the surviving spouse automatically inherits the account and the name of the deceased is just immediately deleted and if the deceased had cards to the account, those cards are canceled.
Right you are. No one is going to send someone to check on what, and when, you do what you do. My mother in law never told the bank(s) her husband died. We did NOT know until she died, two years later. Nothing happened. The only information she sent was sent to Social Security, and no other agency. We informed everyone after she died. I had ONLY one person question me as to why she didn’t tell them. My response was, “Why did my mother-in-law do anything she did? I have no answer as to her thinking.” Case closed. 23 years ago.
@@christopherkidwell9817 That will never happen. Banks/creditors want what's owed to them. They work together to ensure that happens. They pay politicians a boat load of money to keep that ability. So, in the real world, people need to get smarter because there are always going to be sharks in the water and bears in the woods.
We have three checking and savings accounts 1) One for wife, 2) One for Husband, and 3) One Joint. We make deposits and transfers every month to the Joint Account that’s setup with automatic payments. We’re both listed on each other’s Account in case anything happens. Never keep more than $20K in any account.
I looked at my bank: "joint accounts with rights of survivorship" allows the survivor to retain ownership of the account. Accounts without survivorship means the surviving owner will share the account with the estate of the deceased. Need to check how the account was set up!
It has been said that possession is 90% of the law. If you are joint on someone who is doing poorly then it may be best to transfer most of the funds to a single owner account and don't miss a wonderful opportunity to just just be quiet.
There are also estate and gift tax implications to moving the money after death. Either the money was beneficially gifted in the joint account before death, and a gift tax return should have been filed, or the money is part of the estate for estate tax purposes. For Federal estate and gift taxes, the exemption is high enough that it shouldn’t require taxes to be paid for most people. But, in states with estate or inheritance taxes, it could be non-zero, particularly for non-spouse transfers.
@@johnhaller5851 The estate would have to be worth a lot for this to happen. My husbands CPA said there are no tax implications on a joint acct even if he chooses to share it with his sister nobody pays taxes on it.
PA...here my parents had joint accounts with me (son), my wife and my sister as joint owners. Upon their deaths the account holders still had full access to the accounts for a year after they passed...around $50,000... so each of us were assigned a diminished part of the balance for inheritance purposes based on the fact that all 3 of us were joint owners for 10 years prior to their deaths. We ended up paying inheritance tax on about $20,000 of the balance...at equal shares...4.5 to 15% inheritance taxes. It hurt, but if the accounts had not had us as co-owners we'd have been taxed on the whole $50,000 and we'd have had no access.
I was POA when my father was terminally I’ll. We went to his bank and requested that I be added as Payable upon death. They refused my request, and my father’s request. Told us there was no way to do that for us. BOA. Then when he died, there was only his last soc sec check in it. Manager refused to let me close account even though I had all legal documents from probate. Would not give reason. I went to different BOA in my home state, showed probate and court papers to different bank manager, and no problem. Then 2 months later, the original manager in SC had nerve to call me asking how did I close account and did I have correct legal papers. I told him that if he had a problem that he could talk to the manager I dealt with, that I did have all correct documentation. All for less than $500. Unbelievable. Never heard from him again.
Absolutely. That is why I was so frustrated when my parents died in 2020 and frightened as well because if I did not have someone who was a family friend to help me, I would have been out of my home even though my parents totally owned it (no mortgage, no loan against the value of the home) because they did not own the land the home is on (upscale trailer park). Thankfully the estate lawyer got the bank to release the funds VERY quickly because it was cut and dry: I was the only child, my parents did not have a will or never told me that they had one and after searching everywhere I could not find one so that meant I inherited everything.
Most joint accounts are “Joint account with rights of survivorship”. It means upon death of one of the owners, the share is automatically transferred to the survived one.
Helping a older lady with no family and this just happened. Husband died Christmas Day, wife notified SSA next day. Bank shut down access to joint 4:40 account, credit card shut down credit card, etc. Husband had set up bills to charge to credit card so that wife could simply pay credit card once a month to pay her bills. Now she can do neither. Bank will not do anything until they have death certificate which takes 3-6 weeks minimum in this state. The wife summed it up well; “the government doesn’t make it easy for old people!”
Banks that create procedures that dont match state law can screw a spouse who needs to pay bills while burying & grieving their spouse. Can u make a video of what spouses & adult children need to do to make sure that doesnt happen or is the answer to put everything in a trust? Thx for all the greT info & thought provoking scenarios.
01:28 that worked perfectly when my Mom died suddenly and unexpectedly(MI). I was able to get her check book out of her purse and write out a $13,000 check to the funeral home...sure helped...
Status of the account is based on date of death, not date the bank was notified. If you empty the account after death but before bank knows about the death, you have committed a crime.
i believe you are correct, but unless you are cheating a beneficiary (and you shouldn’t cheat anyone) who would bother to prosecute it?? Practically speaking that money will be needed to pay for the funeral, estate attorney retainer, rent, etc. some folks will not have the luxury of excess cash to pay those expenses so depleting the account before the death notification would be a viable option.
I was a joint owner on my mother's account, before, and after she passed, and the bank froze the whole account for 30 days, after her passing...this happened in Kansas...
What all did you do about it? It sounds like whatever you tried didn't work, but still I'm curious. By God I would have been contacting my state representative & senator, the county/state's attorney, the state Attorney General, the Office of the State Bank Commissioner (if it's a state chartered bank), or if it's a federally chartered bank - the Office of the Comptroller of Currency, FDIC, & the Federal Reserve.
My sister and I are joint holders with my dad’s joint chequing account ( we are the only estate beneficiaries). We won’t be telling the bank when my dad dies to avoid the possibility of freezing the account .
My dad and I went to his bank and asked about a power of attorney. The bank manager stated "if you trust him, just add him to the account, it's easier and outlasts a poa." A couple years later, my wife didn't want to be married anymore and sneak filed divorce paoers and tried to grab anything with my social on it. To play defense, we went to the bank and they switched it to "payable upon death".
Here is a issue I found with a joint bank account associated with an elderly parent. If you have a joint account and have auto pay set up, and you’re accessing the account online with the parents login information. When that parent dies and the bank freezes their online access to the account you lose access to all the bill pay addresses and information that you had set up under the parents login information. That’s a big problem that the banks need to figure a way around. My mother-in-law died and my wife lost all access and information of the bills that have been paid online that year.
Wow, althought I'm not in that scenerio, It opened up my eyes to a few things. Never considered that part of the account could eventually go to heirs! I guess if I was part of this I'd probably clean out the account and reopen another one in a different bank before the heirs started coming out of the woodwork with their greedy hands open for a free windfalll.
I guess were confused by how do you fit into the picture of being heirs to ones account. Since your talking about moving accounts after the fact, your obviously are not the deceased. So are you the only child of the deceased and worried about half brothers and sisters, or a very close friend? If they have a right to it, I don’t think moving it around in the Swift Banking System is going to work! You do realize the the FED NOW System of money flow is being implemented as we speak where the Fed is taking over the movement of cash between banks! So any strategies in the future have to take into account whats changing in the very very near future.
When my mother passed the scumbags at the bank said I needed documentation before I could do anything with the account but they didn't need a shred of documentation when I told them over the phone that my mother had passed. They immediately froze the account. It was pretty near drained beforehand but no money could go in or out to pay bills or to receive incoming money. They're duplicity was maddening and I shut down the account as soon as I was able. It seems they only needed documentation when it screwed me over but no documentation was needed for them to screw me over.
When a joint bank account is set up, it should be set up as joint tenant with right of survivorship status. This eliminates access issues if one if the owners dies.
What happens to the right of survivorship? If one person dies, the surviving one should have no problem accessing the account. What they should do is leave instructions with the bank that the surviving spouse/partner has the right of survivorship and both should have it in their respective wills or in their estate planning.
So my take on this if your spouse dies is to open a new account with a different bank in your name only then move all the money from the existing account, leaving maybe $5.00 in it, to the new one without officially closing the old account. Do this before the original bank catches wind of the death. Then let the old account go stale and get closed out on its own.
@@Lunafalls I have been unfortunate to have this happen twice recently. 30 or 40 years ago I know the banks followed the obituaries in the local papers. I think there is a much more sophisticated system now. There is a system in place whereby the banks are notified of deaths. In both of the recent cases my wife was the Trustee and all of the accounts were in the Trust. The accounts were frozen within 48 hours or less.
Is there a specific law in your state that a joint bank account does not automatically become 100% owned by the surviving owner? I was told by banks and attorneys in my state (New York) that joint accounts are considered as right of survivorship and the bank has to recognize the survivor as full owner. Also, a parent may unintentionally disinherit a child by adding one of their other children as a joint owner on the account for convenience since that particular child now becomes 100% owner when the parent dies and now it is their choice to share it, not a legal obligation.
Check the signature card, did the decedent intend to give away assets through right of survivorship? Most likely not if the signature card does not provide that option then it is difficult to prove the intentions of the joint account. A will should override a joint account in this situation. I am not a lawyer but I am in this situation myself as a will beneficiary
@@DevelopersUPC Actually a will does not override a joint account at least not in NY. When my husbands father passed away he was joint on all accounts his sister was not, the will said everything was to be split 50/50 but a lawyer told him any accounts in his name he is not legally obligated to split that money with his sister. He did what he thought his father would want and split that money 50/ 50 with her because he knows his name was put on the accounts so he could take care of paying bills if he had to because he lived in the same area as his father so it was done for that reason.
@@DevelopersUPC You are 100% wrong. A will does not supersede a joint account nor would it supersede beneficiaries on a single owner account. Almost all bank accounts are joint tenants with rights of survivorship which means upon the death of one owner 100% of the account belongs to any surviving owners. I worked in banking for about a decade and saw this cause many problems when kids were added to parents accounts because technically the account was not part of the parents estate.
@@mjsabie8517 if the beneficiary of the joint account was a fiduciary POA and the personal representative to the decedent that added themself on the joint account to benefit themself and cheat the wills beneficiaries, would a will then override this joint account? It was being used as a convenience account to pay medical bills.
I am in NY and you are right on everything you said. My husband was joint owner with his father when his father passed away the lawyer said he has legal right to all of the money but that is his choice if he chooses to share it with his sister. He made the decision to share it with his sister because the will said everything gets split 50/50 and he knew that's what his father would want.
My mother's will leaves everything to her six children. One sibling was joint owner. I understand my mother's checking and 😮savings accounts would be part of her estate as of my mother's passing which was a year ago. Our sibling is also coexecutor and has not given us any information over the past year. There is a house involved, and it still is not listed for sale. Even the coexecutor is in the dark.
If two people have a joint checking account with right of survivorship, but no will, can the bank still freeze half of that account? I thought "right of survivorship" meant both account holders equally own that money.
Good question. The Banks will allow a person to name a beneficiary on their account. I was told by the bank that proof of a death certificate was good enough to change the account to the Beneficiary.
@@sharongauss9298 If you are the sole owner of the account then this would pay them out equally upon your death without needing to go through the courts and probate. This would also supersede any will you have.
POD = Paid on death. Whatever is cashed out and paid and account closed. Passes outside of probate. My grandmother put me as POD on her savings bonds. I had to rush to get them out of the safety deposit box before she died. Safety deposit boxes are a bad place to store things that will be needed for final expenses. Death certificates take a while and even US Saving Bonds take a while to cash in. POD requires a death certificate.
Suppose the other account holder does NOT tell the bank that the other person has passed and just continues and eventually draws the account down to virtually zero?
My dad's bank applied his entire savings to an unsecured loan and turned the remaining loan over to collections 17 days after his passing. He'd never missed a payment. He also had a secured loan with that bank. What gave them the right to empty his account and apply it to the unsecured debt.
@@bekind2047 I "get" your sentiment. But I am asking about the discretion of the bank. I'm going to ask that bank to show me what rules allowed them to do as they did. Collections supposedly happen after months of nonpayment. Dad had never missed a payment. IMO, it was up to the estate administrator to decide where Dad's savings got applied.
From practices generally at my bank, I would NEVER trust them to do the right thing. I am elderly and was considering a joint account with my son. Now I know better. Thank you.
Credit unions are notorious for doing this, they will do this if you are still alive and don’t make a payment. But it’s usually in the fine print that the bank has the right to use funds on deposit to pay unpaid debts with that bank.
Our bank here in Texas does that. Especially on their "Senior" accounts. I wouldn't open a joint checking/savings account with my wife if it didn't have survivorship!
When my husband passed away I brought in his death certificate and they flagged the account that he was deceased. His name remained on the account in case any payment came through for him. Simple. No hassles at all, but I bank locally. Not BofA!
The separate accounts would cause even more problems if one person died. Then the money in their account would definitely become part of their estate and would NOT automatically go to the surviving spouse.
I would like you to make a video and explain what happens to a persons vehicle when they die and the only persons name on the vehicle title is the person that died... Ive heard some rumors about some people that are recieving medicaid health insurance that the state can put a freeze on that persons vehicles...Please help. I am 66 years old and planning my 5 "Death Wishes" ..I dont have anything of value, I have a good used vehicle that i am worried about where it will go when the time comes when I die..
Do you have someone you want to leave it to? You need to check the laws in your own state as to what type of property they can take to pay your bills. I'm also curious as to why you think you're entitled to have the taxpayers, through the Medicaid program, pay your bills but you don't think your estate should have to pay anything back to them?
Check with your state’s DMV about adding a beneficiary to the title. I did that to my two vehicles recently. It was easy and painless. Each vehicle will transfer immediately to my heir with a death certificate.
If you're concerned do NOT say anything to the bank at first. Best to have some rapport with someone at the bank that can read between the lines when the time comes so you don't have to say anything direct to them but they'll know whats up.
@@delpayton415 It depends on when the SS check arrived. My husbands father passed away on Sept 26 2 days later his SS check when in his account we figured they would come back and take it but 1 month later they did not. So we went to the SS office to check on it and they informed us that because SS checks are actually put in 1 month behind the actual deposit date for each month he gets to keep that check but if they would have put another one in in October they would come back and take that one.
@@maryricketts7337 I was actually told by bank employees if you’re not sure don’t say anything. It’s not “sneaking around”, it’s your private business. If you tell the employee that puts them in a position where they might have to lock your account or deposit box if things aren’t setup correctly.
Just common sense. Hello start moving the money out if the account when one of the account holder die. There's wouldn't be anything left for the bank to freeze.
Guys make sure you have a will made out. That makes things much easier when you pass away. Also, if you are young enough, buy life insurance. The money passes to the heirs tax free.
I have PODs or TODs on every asset. I dealt with my step-son estate, it took 3 months for the court to accept his will and appoint me as executor. I was also sole recipient. 3 Months for a 5 minute remote session by telephone. I have taken steps to avoid ever putting anyone into that mess with my estate. Almost nothing is left for probate.
I'm in probate now for my Dad. No will, so intestate. I got the "letters" within days of opening the estate. I was wondering if you are saying it took over 3 months for you to get the "letters". My view is wills hardly solve anything after death. Wills still have to be probated and probate costs money. Even this guy's videos say that estate lawyers make the bulk of their dough doing probate. The key to making life easier for those left behind is to set things up to avoid probate, as you have done with POD and TOD. Any real property like a house or land should be in a trust.
To test the fianancial waters. How about Probating with the State Judicial Circuit Court? Depending on their financial goodness or badness you might get a hot foot.
After a major stroke, my ex signed a POA so I could pay his bills and such. What I did and what I should have done were two very different things. He passed within a year and there remained a balance of just under $25 in checking and savings together. BoA is still in possession of that $25 because every time our sons went - together - to the bank to close the account, the bank wanted this or that or the other proof that a) account holder was deceased and b) they are the rightful and legal heirs of an intestate decedent. After the third unsuccessful trip, I suggested that they insist on getting the requirements in writing. They gave up, instead. Nobody listens to Mom. :-(
Next time, get the requirements in writing and let them know upon leaving that, "This will help our lawyer get these final things in order. He will be contacting your central office."
Dont forget the "other" joint account holder. If social security was being deposited to this account and the deceased didnt die on the 1st of the month, uncle sam withdraws the last months payment back, Inspite of not having withdrawl rights.
This is a really bad video. You are either bad lawyers or very good because you are creating misinformation to muddy up a relatively simple topic and make it seem like people need lawyers to take care of something pretty straight forward.
