My 17 year old niece found out that someone opened a joint account with her name on it at her local bank. She asked the bank how she could remove her name from the account, and the bank told her to close the account and take the money. Now the bank is asking her to repay the money that she removed from the account. Is she legally responsible for this debt? What should she do about this situation?
Your niece had no idea how she was added to this deposit account. It would appear that identity theft and or forgery happened. She should not have taken the money from the account, if there was a crime involved.
At this point she has the money from the account and the bank is requesting that it be returned. There is no reason she should have profited from this. Someone does have the rights to the money, whether it is a co-owner or someone else. At this point, she needs to return the funds, or contact an attorney to help sort it out with the bank.
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
Your niece had no idea how she was added to this 