what gets paid from joint account

Sea_Shell

Savvy_Sue said:

I didn't realise I was raising concerns with it, I was just stating the by now obvious! The OP needs to TALK about hopes, expectations, what's going in the joint pot and what's not. 

bunnygo said:

one thought; a joint account survives if one person dies. The LAST thing you want to be thinking about when bereaved is how to pay the gas bill. Suggestion: set the household bills to pay from the joint account, both of you put regular money in, discuss the fripperies separately. Each person should also have their own credit card and their own account, the latter with a different banking licence from the joint account.

joint credit cards are no good as if the lead name dies, the card closes for the second person.

Yes, but ... if one person loses capacity and has not set up a Lasting Power of Attorney, then that joint account may be frozen, to protect that person's interests! 

Make your LPAs, people ... 

Who (or how) would the bank be notified in the situation one loses capacity, which would result in a joint account being frozen?    What would stop the second account holder from accessing all the cash in it, before any official action was taken?

Would it only be (when) if the other account holder had to apply 'officially' to the OPG?

Savvy_Sue

Sea_Shell said:

Savvy_Sue said:

bunnygo said:

one thought; a joint account survives if one person dies. The LAST thing you want to be thinking about when bereaved is how to pay the gas bill. Suggestion: set the household bills to pay from the joint account, both of you put regular money in, discuss the fripperies separately. Each person should also have their own credit card and their own account, the latter with a different banking licence from the joint account.

joint credit cards are no good as if the lead name dies, the card closes for the second person.

Yes, but ... if one person loses capacity and has not set up a Lasting Power of Attorney, then that joint account may be frozen, to protect that person's interests! 

Make your LPAs, people ... 

Who (or how) would the bank be notified in the situation one loses capacity, which would result in a joint account being frozen?    What would stop the second account holder from accessing all the cash in it, before any official action was taken?

Would it only be (when) if the other account holder had to apply 'officially' to the OPG?

The case I heard about was on Radio 4, a number of years ago, younger couple. Husband was self-employed, had an accident which rendered him comatose in hospital. Wife had no means of paying mortgage, so alerted the lender (who was, I believe, the bank) and asked for a few months 'holiday'. Response was to freeze the joint account, into which her income (such as it was), Child Benefit etc was paid. 

A loss of capacity can of course occur without the bank ever finding out, but I think we came close to it within my own family. One parent flatly refused to countenance Power of Attorney (even in favour of the spouse, who actually ran the finances) and then developed dementia. I can't remember what the circumstances were, but the bank wanted a signature on something, so they went to the bank together. There was some concern that any comparison with the signature on file would cause issues, and there could have been 'grumpiness' and refusal to sign on a not so good day. 

In our case, the joint account continued to be operated just as it always had, so nothing to raise concerns, but I think it would be a pretty high bar anyway! 

TBH I do not know if the OPG would notify any bank that an application had been made, and suspect there's nothing to stop the second account holder from emptying the joint account before telling the bank - leave a suitable gap between shifting the money and notifying them, and there might not be anything they could do anyway. 

subjecttocontract

We have a joint bank account but I'm the only one who pays into it. We have joint credit cards, I'm the one who settles the bill each month She has her own income & savings and her own accounts from which she pays for her stuff like her car, lunches and her personal expenses like hair, nails etc....the joint account pays for everything else.

This set up works for us but in my experience there is no right or wrong way, everyone seems to operate differently, some astonishingly differently ! We were amazed recently when we learned that a couple we know quite well had no idea how much each other earned but they were still able to share expenses.

What_time_is_it

There's lots of approaches to this issue, and you can only go with what feels right for the two of you.
For what it's worth, my partner and I have a "main" joint account from which we pay for pretty much everything. We've always set it up in such a way so that whatever we are each earning we are both left with the same amount each in an individual account. At the moment we each have around £100-£150 a month going into our individual accounts and we use this for anything that's a treat or a present to each other or something that falls outside of "normal" spend. We agreed a long time ago that it would be a good idea to remain some element of individual cash and that it should be equal regardless of earnings. Other than that, it's all in the same pot. Always has been for nearly 30 years.

It's basically the idea put forward by @exodi on the previous page of "equal remainder", and done for the exact reasons he states.