Bank need meeting to transfer money?

Brie

Give them a deadline to hold the meeting or move your money.  

IanManc

If the money was given to the child as an unconditional gift then it belongs to the child and you cannot "get that money into our joint account" on the basis that the person who gave it has changed their mind and would like it back to buy a house for herself. I wouldn't be surprised if Halifax refuse to release the money unless you can show them that you are transferring the money into another account / investment in the name of the child.

I agree with the above poster who said that you need to get professional advice. I think the first port of call should be the solicitor who arranged the transfer of the inheritance to the son's account, so you can check exactly on what basis the transfer was made. You need to get advice and information before you meet with Halifax. However, if it was an unconditional gift then it is the child's property and you cannot just take it back.

Daliah

I would definitely hire a solicitor, just to be certain that the resolution of the matter will all be legally watertight.

k3lvc

Brie said:

Give them a deadline to hold the meeting or move your money.  

But the issue may be that Halifax don't believe it's their money to move - not sure any threat would hold much water

Keep_pedalling

Ergates said:

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. 

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.

Inheritance tax could be totally avoided using a combination of NRB, spousal exemption along side a professionally drafted will. 

With no will in place the the bulk of the estate would be inherited by the OP (first £270k + 50% of the rest) so with under £325k going to the child no IHT would be payable. At the moment it is a PET potentially subject to IHT for 7 years from the date of the transfer to the child.

I hope this mess can be undone otherwise the money can’t be used for the next 13 years when it will be available to be spent by the child on whatever they wish.

Ergates

CaptWreck said:

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?

In terms of getting this resolved - keep pushing for the meeting and raise the complaint.  Them wanting to meet and discuss this is reasonable.  Them repeatedly cancelling meetings isn't.   It doesn't matter what a meeting is about - making then cancelling multiple appointments is really really bad customer service.

Regarding the HMRC - If the intention was for your wife to retain ownership of the money, then any interest earned on the money should have been counted against her as income for taxation purposes.   Presumably though, if your wife has been unwell she may not have been working?  If that is the case then the tax implication might be simplified - as her annual income, including the interest, may still have been below the minimum threshold of £12570.

Either way - *if* the intention is to say the ownership of the money was retained by your wife then you need to get that sorted with HMRC *asap*.   People hiding money in  their children's accounts is a thing people do and HMRC have a system specifically designed to look for it  (I helped build it).  Going to HMRC saying "I made a mistake" is far far better then being picked up by one of their checks.

Ergates

Olinda99 said:

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.

From the perspective of the bank though, those would look identical.   All they can see is that the OP's wife moved money into a childs account and now wants to take it out again.

Ergates

Keep_pedalling said:

Ergates said:

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. 

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.

Inheritance tax could be totally avoided using a combination of NRB, spousal exemption along side a professionally drafted will. 

With no will in place the the bulk of the estate would be inherited by the OP (first £270k + 50% of the rest) so with under £325k going to the child no IHT would be payable. At the moment it is a PET potentially subject to IHT for 7 years from the date of the transfer to the child.

I hope this mess can be undone otherwise the money can’t be used for the next 13 years when it will be available to be spent by the child on whatever they wish.

At the time the transfer happened, the OP and his now wife weren't married.

kaMelo

There were many ways to achieve what she wanted such as a discretionary trust and given you state in your OP that the inheritance and transfer was done with a solicitor involved I'm surprised this wasn't discussed at the time along with tax implications such as income tax liability for her on the savings interest in her sons name.  I would suggest  getting all the paperwork together to find out exactly what happened before doing anything.

A gift can of course be re-gifted but can a five year old knowingly gift anything? 

We can but speculate on exactly what it it they want a meeting for but the way it's been handled up to now is not acceptable so I'd agree with @Brie in putting in a complaint about that, it should at least focus their minds and get a meeting. Only then can you find out exactly what it is they are wanting to know but I tend to agree with @Keep_pedalling, this has the potential to become a bit of a mess.

sheramber

Did the wife sign a deed of variation to pass the money direct to the children?