New bank account, not linked to my current one help

Evil_Olive

Hi all,
My husband is completely useless with money, has loans, overdrafts and direct debits all over the place and keeps getting sky high bank charges every month which deplete his already low salary to the point where bills don't get paid and more charges follow.
He has asked me to help him clean up his act before he gets too far in debt. :wall:

At present he's only about £2000 or so in actual debt, but it could quickly spiral out of control as neither of us earn over minimum wage or have any savings and I was laid off recently. Luckily, I belong to this forum, so I knew enough not to open a joint account with him when we got married last year. :cool:

As a first step, I am wanting to open a new basic bank account for him to separate his 'spending money' from the direct debits and help with his budgeting, bills and debt management.

There's a risk that one of his accounts could call in a £650 overdraft at some point as he is constantly in his overdraft and going over his arranged limit almost every month which I understand is a trigger for that, not to mention the £50 charge each time :eek:.

I read on this site that it was best to open an account that was owned by a different company/not linked to his present bank as that would prevent them taking his salary out of one account to cover debt on another and leaving him with nothing to live on.

I can't seem to find any information about which banks are linked to which anywhere - can anyone help with this?

All his present accounts are with Royal Bank of Scotland. A further complication is that we come under the part which is being sold off because of the competition thing that happened a while back so we'd need to avoid links with whatever company it's sold to as well which is a problem because we don't know who this will be yet. It was going to be Santander but they pulled out.
UPDATE: Apparently it will become part of 'Williams & Glyn'

Also, we can't do anything with Natwest as he got into such bad trouble with them in his early 20s that he was banned for life!

If anyone can point me to information on which banks are linked with each other I'd be very grateful.

I'd also like to hear from any anyone else whose partner is a money nightmare and how you cope/manage them

seanavfc92

Right of offset (the ability to access bank account to pay other associated debts) only applies to accounts held with that bank.

If the banks are trading as separate identities, there isn't a link that can be used.

Contrary to popular belief, those banks under Lloyds Banking Group (Lloyds, TSB, Halifax, etc) cannot use this link, as it would be deemed as unfair for someone owing money to Lloyds and banking with Halifax to have their funds accessed.

The only bank this doesn't apply to is Santander, who own Bradford & Bingley, Alliance & Leicester and Abbey.

Long story short, as long as the banks are trading as separate identities, the right of offset can't be used.

Evil_Olive

Thank you

So, if he opened a basic bank account with the Co-op, he should be fine?