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What Happens to Joint Account after One Dies
My cousin requested that my mom open an account with her, because she didn't trust her brothers. My mom and my cousin were the only two on the account. My cousin recently passed away, and now we are not sure if my mom has authorization on the account or not, since the death of my cousin. What are her rights? My cousins, her brothers, are threatening to take my mom to court over this issue.
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 Your mother can check with the bank holding the account to find out if she and your cousin were listed as joint owners with rights of survivorship, or if she was only an authorized signer on your cousin's account.
If you mother was an authorized signer, the account now belongs to your cousin's estate. If she was a joint owner with rights of survivorship, the account should be your mother's now, by operation of law.
Your cousins can try to take your mother to court to claim that the money isn't rightfully hers, but they are unlikely to be successful unless they can convince the court that your mother exerted undue influence on your cousin to be named as the joint owner of the account. It's often said that in America anyone can sue anyone else over anything, and that's true. What isn't said is how many of those lawsuits gets tossed out of court because they lack any merit.
Published on BankingQuestions.com 5/07/09
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