Can we allow a cosigner on a representative payee account?
by Ken Golliher, BOL Guru BIO AND CONTACT INFO
Question: Can we allow a cosigner on a representative payee account?
Answer: No. The representative payee was named by SSA and is responsible for the handling of the funds; he got his power from SSA and cannot delegate it to someone else. Clearly, your bank is aware that only one person was empowered and you could readily be held liable for allowing any other party access to those funds.
You will not find a prohibition on this in The Guide For Representative Payees, but there SSA is clearly focused on explaining things to the person they appointed. I doubt that it would occur to them that this person would feel empowered to appoint someone else.
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