Bank need meeting to transfer money?

CaptWreck

Hi all. Long time lurker, first time poster.
So here is our situation. My wife recived an inheritance some years ago c.£800k. It all went through solicitors and was above board. At the time she was facing a potentially life ending condition so elected to get that money placed into an account her sons name (2 at the time) - this was a normal childs account and not an ISA. Her thinking being, if she died it'll look after her son. Moving forward a few years we are now married and her health has massively improved where she now can reasonable expect to live another 30-40 years.
So it is our plan to get that money into our joint account and purchase a family home (and other expenses etc). We have been told by Halifax (who the childs account is with) that all is needed is birth certificates and usual ID for everyone involved, but more importantly, we need a meeting that will last around 1 hour before we can make this transfer. No one is particularly helpful when we ask why we need this meeting. But we've been told we need one.

No problem initially, however we are now 3 months down the line from what would have been our first meeting. They have rescheduled due to sickness, power cuts at the bank, people double booking and cencelling our appointment etc etc.We had a voicemail today telling us the appointment we had booked for tomorrow had now been cancelled due to the one person we need to speak to having a doctors appointment tomorrow (the guy calle dus himself).

So we are now missing our oppertinity to get our dream house because the bank have been dragging us a long to have a meeting we're not sure we need with someone who cannot give us the time of day. Crucially, we havent been told we need to bring anything to support Anti money laundering or tax etc. It was all above board and we just assume its to cover the bank against any liability due to the sum or that its a childs account?

So my questions if anyone can help or has any experience about this, what can we do? 
Complaints and FOS may not speed anything up. We have tried speaking to a different halifax branch in hopes of getting an appointment elsehwere but its impossible to call through to a branch and their webchat takes several hours to get through to be told they are having trouble speaking to other branches to.

Any input as to what we can do or why the bank is making us jum through these hoops will be really appreciated.

-C

kaMelo

Whilst many people do put their money in children's accounts, once deposited the money legally belongs to the child, not the trustee. Whilst the trustee (which I assume the child's mother is) has access to the money, any use of the money should only be for the benefit of the child. In short, by depositing the money in the child's account she gave it to them and it ceased to be hers.

Considering the sum you're talking about maybe this is why the bank want to talk to her to ensure the child's wishes and best interests are being considered rather than the wishes of the trustee.

eskbanker

CaptWreck said:

My wife recived an inheritance some years ago c.£800k. It all went through solicitors and was above board. At the time she was facing a potentially life ending condition so elected to get that money placed into an account her sons name (2 at the time) - this was a normal childs account and not an ISA.

A side issue beyond the main question, but was the interest income declared to HMRC as your wife's or her son's, or was the £800K in an account paying a poor rate?

Keep_pedalling

I am her thinking was horribly flawed. She has basically gifted her child a huge sum of money a large portion of which would have been subject to a IHT bill of £190k had she not survived her illness. I am assuming she did not complete a deed of variation to pass her inheritance to her son.

I think she now has to do what she should have done before doing this and take professional advice. 

Ergates

Keep_pedalling said:

I am her thinking was horribly flawed. She has basically gifted her child a huge sum of money a large portion of which would have been subject to a IHT bill of £190k had she not survived her illness. I am assuming she did not complete a deed of variation to pass her inheritance to her son.

I think she now has to do what she should have done before doing this and take professional advice. 

I concur.  Putting the money into her son's account didn't really solve anything - he would have inherited the money anyway, and would still have had to pay inheritance tax - and has thrown a large spanner into the works now, as the money belongs to the son.  The OP/Wife are now, basically, just taking the son's money off him - and the bank need to be sure they're doing this in the son's best interests.  They might not agree that what they're proposing to spend the money on *is* in the son's best interest.  e.g. would the son own the house?  (probably should do if he's putting up all the money).

I'd suggest the OP/Wife might also want to see legal advice - putting a large amount of money into a child's account is also a big red flag for tax avoidance and/or an attempt at deprivation of assets.

Olinda99

It is not automatic that puttung money into the son's account makes it his.

Was the intention to gift it to him ("here son, I hereby gift you this money") or was it more like "here son, look after this money for me until I need it"

born_again

You are going to have to jump through Halifax's hoops. As they do not want to be end up being on the end of a legal case later on from child saying that they let parent take their money without their permission.

In effect there has been some tax avoidance here. Which again Halifax will have to cover off. They may/should even report to HMRC on this. As it falls under bank to report this, or risk a big fine.
Might help if you could get proof of the illness, as a reason why these actions were taken.

Brie

Send the bank a letter (preferable to an email), maybe drop it off in person.  Have it labelled COMPLAINT.  Go on to explain how many meetings have been arranged, how you have made yourselves available and how they have all been cancelled at the last minute.  State that this is costing you money as you need to reschedule things, losing out on purchasing at a lower price etc.  

I suspect once they get that you'll get a meeting quite quickly or be told it's no longer required.

elsien

Olinda99 said:

It is not automatic that puttung money into the son's account makes it his.

Was the intention to gift it to him ("here son, I hereby gift you this money") or was it more like "here son, look after this money for me until I need it"

From the OP, gifting it as the partner did not expect to live. 

Olinda99

the OP did not mention gifting, but rather the expediency of looking after her son should she die. At no stage did the OP state an intention of relinquishing ownership of the money whilst she was alive

In any case, what is at issue  here is Halifax's behaviour in cancelling so many meetings.

CaptWreck

Thanks for your input already guys. It is helpful. If I can elaborate further:
the child is now 5, so the gifting was essentially without his knowledge. 

As far as I am aware up until the point of transfer from the solicitor into the child’s account was all done above board. Anything after that point almost certainly wouldn’t have been done. 

My wife suffers from liver failure and was vastly underweight to qualify for any surgery. Due to her liver she wasn’t able to take her anti psych meds for her BPD/Anxiety/depression/PTSD and essentially she closed up to the world and basically gave up and went full ostrich. 

Thankfully in the time we’ve been together her diet and weight have improved and now she’s on the liver transplant list (hopefully for this year). 

So proving her mental and health state will be easy enough to do. However we obviously want to avoid doing anything wrong by HMRC. 

So the suggestions I’m getting is there may be tax implications or the child suing in the later years and they just want to cover themselves. So I should keep pushing for the meeting (and complain as suggested here) and just let Halifax explain what needs to be done?

or is there anything I can do to get ahead of this?