I have a jointchecking account with a person who died. His pension checks and social security were direct deposits. Does the bank have the right to freeze the account for thirty days, change it to an estate account and not pay the checks issued from this account? I went to the bank was told they had to speak to their legal department about this because I'm a signer on the account. Meanwhile, I had to issue new checks to cover the ones the bank did not pay. It's been a week and noone has gotten back to me. What are my rights as a consumer?
Untitled
It's possible that the bank's records reflected your role as that of an authorized signer on the account, rather than as a joint owner. That would explain the change to an estate account, particularly if a court-approved estate representative claimed the account. That means the first question you need to resolve is whether the account was actually a joint account, in which case the norm would be for the account to become yours, or an individually-owned account on which you were an authorized signer, in which case your authority ended with the owner's death.
As for the checks that were rejected, it would have been legal for the bank to refuse payment on any check signed by the deceased owner, although it could have paid checks for ten days following his death. Press the bank for answers. It's possible that the delay means that the bank is trying to figure out how to respond because it realizes there is a problem. It's also possible that the bank representative hasn't yet posed the problem to the legal department or that the legal department hasn't had time to respond.
BankingQuestions.com is a free service made possible by the generous support of our advertisers. Advertisers are not responsible for site content. Please help us keep BankingQuestions.com FREE by supporting our advertisers. When you see an ad for a product or service you may have an interest in, click through to learn more.
Accounts
Article
Q&A
Podcast
Video
Blog
Discussions
PDF
Powerpoint
It's possible that the bank's records reflected your role as that of an authorized signer on the account, rather than as a joint owner. That would explain the change to an estate account, particularly if a court-approved estate representative claimed the account. That means the first question you need to resolve is whether the account was actually a joint account, in which case the norm would be for the account to become yours, or an individually-owned account on which you were an authorized signer, in which case your authority ended with the owner's death.