Joint bank account with my brother

legaraal

Does anyone know of a bank which would be willing to open up a joint bank account for myself and my brother (we have different surnames and different addresses, we live about 25 miles apart) over the telephone or over the internet?  The background to this is that our Mum has just died and we are executors of her will and wish to have an account in both of our names in order to deal with her estate.  My Mum banked with Lloyds.  Having spent 2 hours on the phone to them this morning, their attitude is that if we were to open an Executors bank account in our joint names (which is our ideal outcome, we think), we could only do that in person, both of us present in the same branch at the same time, which would firstly breach the lockdown and secondly Lloyds say that nobody in their branches is willing / able to do such a face to face meeting for health and safety reasons (i.e. because of the Covid 19 risk from face to face meetings).  Lloyds further say that  they are not willing to open up a "non executors" joint bank account for us, over the phone or online, because we have different surnames and live at different addresses.  (We could provide them with passports / driving licences / utility bills etc etc until we are blue in the face, they were not interested).  The parting shot of the Lloyds person I last spoke to, this morning, was to say that some other bank might have different rules i.e. be willing to open up a joint or executors account for us, via the phone / internet (presumably with us uploading our identity documents, online, as part of that process). 

Does anyone have any suggestions?  Incidentally I am already a Lloyds bank account holder myself, although my brother is not, this also fell on deaf ears with them.  Thanks for any suggestions.

[Deleted User]

I'm pretty sure that you will need to open a joint Executor's account to administer the estate. You will probably have to hold fire until normality returns. Any creditors and/or beneficiaries will surely understand any delay due to the present circumstances.

Zanderman

I'm surprised they were so unhelpful. We had no problems with lloyds when we needed an executors account.
A few points that may, or may not, be helpful (you may be well aware of some of this already):

• Did you ring their bereavement service?  The attitude you get from that may be different to branch or ordinary CS staff.
• Do you have probate? You will need an executors account at some stage - but probably not until probate is granted - as you don't have any legal access to your mum's finances until then so won't be able to fund it.  Her existing account(s) will be frozen by the bank(s) apart from paying funeral expenses. 
• If she's recently died (sorry for your loss btw), so no probate yet, and you need an account to pay ongoing bills etc for her house or whatever then you'll probably have to use your own money.
• When you do get an executor's account there's no real need for it to be joint - one executor can act jointly for the other.  We had three executors and realised that it would just make things too complicated to have three signatories so we just went for one person on the account, the other two weren't account-holders.

Edited to add:  Lloyds Bereavement Team: 
https://www.lloydsbank.com/help-guidance/customer-support/bereavement.html
A later edit to add:

• What do you need this joint account for? If you have probate then I assume it is for executing the estate (though no need for that to be joint), but if you don't have probate yet then what's it for, at this stage?

mab3000

I would have thought that if you are wanting to open an executors account in particular then it would be something you would have to present the grant of probate for therefore the reason why you would have to go to branch for for this to be done. In terms of opening a standard joint account, it seems they have their own requirements that you would not satisfy, possibly due to joint account applications being a higher risk of being fraudulent is why they won’t consider a joint account application being done online or over the phone.

One thing you could try giving the current circumstances is opening a joint account with one of the internet banks, like Monzo or Starling. However you would both need to open a separate sole account to then open a joint account with those banks. 

xylophone

Have you  already obtained probate?

cloud_dog

When the FIL passed Lloyds bereavement team couldn't have been  more helpful to my OH.  My OH agreed with the two other executors to use an account in my OH name (already open, unused).

Lloyds were happy to either leave the FIL account open to service ongoing bills or to close on presentation of the death certificate.  We chose the closure option, and all Lloyds accounts (current, savings,ISA) were transferred in to my OH 'nominated' account.

Life assurance was paid out on submission of appropriate forms and death certificate.  All prior to probate.

Any bills were paid from this account.

Obviously, property disposal could not occur until probate was granted and none of the assets were distributed until all appropriate notifications had been completed.

badger09

cloud_dog said:

When the FIL passed Lloyds bereavement team couldn't have been  more helpful to my OH.  My OH agreed with the two other executors to use an account in my OH name (already open, unused).

Lloyds were happy to either leave the FIL account open to service ongoing bills or to close on presentation of the death certificate.  We chose the closure option, and all Lloyds accounts (current, savings,ISA) were transferred in to my OH 'nominated' account.

Life assurance was paid out on submission of appropriate forms and death certificate.  All prior to probate.

Any bills were paid from this account.

Obviously, property disposal could not occur until probate was granted and none of the assets were distributed until all appropriate notifications had been completed.

Are you sure?

I was informed by several banks' bereavement teams (though not Lloyds) that all payments out of deceased's accounts would be frozen within a couple of days of notification of death, but that payments in would still be accepted until the account was closed.

Closure happened either when the bank paid out the funds if they did not require Probate, or on payment of funds after receipt of Probate.

Zanderman

badger09 said:

cloud_dog said:

When the FIL passed Lloyds bereavement team couldn't have been  more helpful to my OH.  My OH agreed with the two other executors to use an account in my OH name (already open, unused).
Lloyds were happy to either leave the FIL account open to service ongoing bills or to close on presentation of the death certificate.  We chose the closure option, and all Lloyds accounts (current, savings,ISA) were transferred in to my OH 'nominated' account.
Life assurance was paid out on submission of appropriate forms and death certificate.  All prior to probate.
Any bills were paid from this account.
Obviously, property disposal could not occur until probate was granted and none of the assets were distributed until all appropriate notifications had been completed.

Are you sure?
I was informed by several banks' bereavement teams (though not Lloyds) that all payments out of deceased's accounts would be frozen within a couple of days of notification of death, but that payments in would still be accepted until the account was closed.
Closure happened either when the bank paid out the funds if they did not require Probate, or on payment of funds after receipt of Probate.

There seem to be various ways round these things.  Not least varying the time the bank is told about the death.
In our case the deceased had accounts with Lloyds and NatWest - her bills were paid from NatWest and there were some outstanding. We visited Lloyds first to inform them of the death, explained the situation and they, Lloyds, suggested we don't yet tell NatWest about the death as no harm would be done (though it wouldn't be proper!) by the account there still paying the odd direct debit until probate was granted.  And having an open account there would also enable payment to be made in.
So that's what we did.  The Lloyds accounts were frozen completely - no payments in or out except the invoice from the funeral directors.  Until we had probate.
But NatWest, unaware of the death until some weeks later, carried on paying the house bills.  And we could pay in to it too - funds that came in pre-probate. We were very careful not to draw down the account though as that really would have been wrong and very questionable. We kept our expenses separate and paid them back after we had probate.

Thrugelmir

Opening an executors account is a time consuming process. Despite having banked with LLoyds since I was 15. My sister travelled down and we went through the process together. No short cuts. Required a trained individual as well. 

xylophone

Relative (and the deceased for that matter) had banked with Barclays for years but  he  still had to go into the branch (appointment required) with the Grant before being allowed to set up an Exor account.

greatcrested

Do you both trust each other?

Frankly, life is a lot easier if one of you manages the Estate and submits all the HMRC and Probate forms.

The other Executer can declare theselves as Executer with Power Reserved.

You can still discuss/agree what needs to happen, and the active Executer should keeprecords of the estate, but day to day it's a lot easier than having two (or more) people trying to manage the paperwork and finances.