Of course, these things happen when I am out of the office. I'm now trying to recover but the horse is out of the barn, so to speak. I have reached out to our attorney, so I am not looking for legal advice at this point, but I am interested to hear how others might recover from this situation. I believe we have gotten into trouble (as one usually does) by inserting ourselves in the middle of something we didn't need to insert ourselves into so now I am just trying to find a way to get ourselves back on the right track.



Here’s the scenario:

A long time customer came in Saturday with two of her adult children and opened a new account. (Let’s call those Children B & C). The money was withdrawn from an account with Child A. A banker who works with the customer on a regular basis was concerned about the transaction so she called Child A on Monday. Child a sent over a screen shot of what looks like a patient portal page where a physician indicates, in the notes, that the customer/patient has dementia. After receiving that documentation and speaking with Child A, the second banker removed the funds from the new account and put the funds back into the old account. We do not believe Child A communicates with Child B & C so I anticipate Child B & C coming into the bank and wanting to know, rightfully so, where that money went. I am very concerned about the legality of that transaction where we moved the money back. We could reverse the transaction again and be on solid ground (I believe) but I am concerned about child B & C using the funds inappropriately. Child A is stating that she is filing an Elder Abuse claim against Children B & C but it doesn’t seem to me that we can act upon her stating that she will be filing a claim.

I feel like a guardian needs to be appointed ASAP but in the meantime here we are.

You can freeze the funds most likely and wait for a court order to release disputed funds, but like you said, you are asking legal questions here and you need to wait for your legal counsel to respond. I would not take another step without them in your back pocket.

Do you not have something like this in your depositor's agreement?

An adverse claim occurs when
• Any person or entity makes a claim against your account or funds in your account,
• We believe a conflict exists between or among your account’s owners, or
• We believe a dispute exists over who has account ownership or authority to withdraw funds
from your account.

In these situations, we may take any of the following actions without any responsibility or liability to you:
• Continue to rely on the documents we have on file for your account.
• Honor the claim against your account funds if we’re satisfied the claim is valid.
• Freeze all or a part of the funds in your account until we believe the dispute is resolved to our satisfaction

Thank you, rlcarey - we are thinking along the same path.

I would quietly go back on vacation and await legal counsel weighing in, and return from vacation a day or two after that dusts settles!

here is my concern - you (you being bank, not you personally) took action on something child A said verbally and provided, via screen shot, but won't take action on something child A said about filing charges:

"Child A sent over a screen shot of what looks like a patient portal page where a physician indicates, in the notes, that the customer/patient has dementia...and speaking with Child A"

"child A is stating that she is filing an Elder Abuse claim against Children B & C but it doesn’t seem to me that we can act upon her stating that she will be filing a claim."

Pretty much anything you do at this point just compounds the issue, so i would encourage legal to act quickly.

It may be a moot point, but could you simply call Children B and C and say that after careful consideration, we are not moving forward with this account, and the funds are being returned to the account where they initiated?

As a bank, we do have the option to sever ties and close an account at any time, for any reason?

Unrelated, but somehow similar:

Years ago I had a customer, an elderly woman what had two daughters; Daughter A and Daughter B. Daughter A and B did not get on well.

On a Monday, customer would come with Daughter B and close a checking account with Daughter A, and open a new account.
On a Friday, customer would come with Daughter A and close a checking account with Daughter B, and open a new account.
The following Tuesday, customer would come in with Daughter B and close a checking account with Daughter A, and open a new account.
Three Thursday later.....well, you can see where I am going with this.

Both daughters were playing Mom (customer) against each other, saying that each other were stealing, blah blah blah.

We eventually brought Mom into office and explained her accounts would be closed, and we were parting ways.

missmary, I love that story! I've never had one go on quite that long! Our challenge was that we don't really know who is really acting in mom's best interest. I think we're headed to ward your final solution with closing accounts, but we'll see.

It was an unfortunate circumstance and it was relationship we hated seeing severed, but when we weighed the pros and cons of keeping the account, the cons outnumbered the pros. In hindsight, what we should have done is opened one last account with both daughters as POD and let them fight it out after Mom passed, LOL.