Question & Answer

Question: If one of the joint holders of an account dies, can we just remove the name from the account?

Answer: It's best to have a policy on this to make your job a little easier. And the best policy in our opinion is that you may not remove a name from an account. If a joint holder has died, close the account out and open another account.

The reasoning behind this is the audit trail. If a name is removed from an account, and particularly if one name is taken off and another added, very often the records are purged and updated. In the case of a death of one of the account holders, it is quite possible in the settling of the estate that an attorney will write for a date-of-death balance. It is frustrating and embarrassing for the financial institution to inform the attorney (who is probably looking at checks and statements) that "we have no record of any accounts in the name of the decedent."

Name changes on account records are usually purged. Closed account records are kept and can be accessed.We know you're going to have the occasional surviving holder of a joint account who says they've "...had the same account number for 51 years and I don't want to change it." Certainly you're going to accommodate as much as you possibly can. But try to make it an exception.

Copyright © 1994 Bankers' Hotline. Originally appeared in Bankers' Hotline, Vol. 4, No. 8, 2/94