We received a letter from a customer requesting the joint account holder to be removed. We do this, but only with BOTH account holder's signatures. Do we need permission from the person being removed to do this? If this person simply closed the account I would not need both to agree, so I need advise. Our legal department said if we do this we would be violating someone's rights.

I would just close the acccount and mail them a check in both of their names. Something bad is probably going on here and I would not stick the bank's hand into this cookie jar. As a rule, it is a very bad idea to remove one party from an account unless they are deceased.

There are threads on this. But what will you do if you remove them today and next week a check comes in signed by the person removed? What if the check was dated yesterday? What if it was dated 3 days from now? Do you even look at every check?

I can tell you we had a policy of requiring the account to be closed and a new one opened. We made an exception when an employee was getting divorced. I should clarify, the bank president made the exception. And it was a frigin nightmare with checks, deposits, ATM withdrawals. Talk about falling on your sword.

Policies work when they are adhered to.

Thansk all. Wasn't looking at it that way.

I prefer having the account closed and a single account opened. We have, on occasion, taken a letter from the person asking to be removed from an account. One owner does not have the right to remove another owner. If only one signature is required on the consumer account, they do have the right to close the account. As noted above, you are asking for trouble if you accept the instruction of the other party.

We require a new account to be opened as well. The only time we don't is in the case of a minor coming of age, but then we require all parties to sign off to have the parents removed from the account.

Always a clean cut except for the minors as Brenda said. It's a lot easier to change accounts, than to deal with ugly ex's and attorney's down the road. Most consumer agree after you rationalize where you are coming from.

We also close the account and re-open in the single name. As stated above numerous times - nothing but bad comes out of 'removing' someone's name.