Joint Bank Account, can I get any money back?

Sn00py

Hello, In 2011 I had a joint bank account with my aunt. I was responsible for growing the savings account and she/we had around £150,000 in the account but then in 2014 my aunt was diagnosed with dementia. As Power of Attorney I continued to look after the account. In 2019 she had to go into a care home paying around £1,200 a week out of our joint bank account.

Recently a friend told me that 50% of what was in the joint account was legally mine but over the last nearly 5 years the money has gone down to around £15,000. I genuinely thought that because of her diagnosis I could not touch the money. Now social services have stepped in to pay for the care home and they will back date the payment to 1 March this year when we last had around £23,350 in the account. The care home have agreed to refund the extra that was paid, around £11,000; this will take the account over the £23,350 limit but will this mean she has to start contributing to her own care again?

My other question is, was my friend right and would I have been within my rights to take half the money back then, and can I still do this now with what's left?  My second question is, can I claim my half of the money back from social services? Probably not, but this is going to haunt me until I get to the bottom of it. Of course I would never see my aunt go short of anything and if the law states there is nothing I can do, so be it. Please can anyone help shed any light on this please as it is now keeping me awake at night.

Torry_Quine

How you go about things I don't know. Half the money in a joint account is deemed to belong to each person unless a good reason otherwise. When her money got lower only ½ of it should have been noted in any financial assesment. 

Keep_pedalling

If you never put any of your own money in the account then what you did was correct it is still her money. Sometimes people set up accounts like this for convenience purposes only and this sounds like one of those cases.

For some reason you have posted this in the mobiles forum, so I have reported it and hopefully a mod will move it to a more appropriate one.

molerat

Your friend is only half right.  Whose money was paid into the account ?

Brie

I can only say from personal experience, or in fact that of my OH & his mom.  They were joint on an account that her money had been going in to.  So hers.  Not his.  Bu the LA deemed that it was 50/50 and so only took half into account for determining what she needed to pay.

Now this is different from you thinking you are entitled to a portion due to you working on your aunt's behalf.  That's great but not the point.  You can take (if you like) half of your aunt's money rather than it paying for her care.  do you think that she's not entitled to what she has earned?

elsien

What Keep_Pedalling said. 

It depends on what you’ve paid into the account yourself, but if it’s always been your aunt’s money then it remains your aunt’s money. 

https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/19920/#:~:text=The%20person%20who%20beneficially%20owns,who%20are%20the%20beneficial%20owners.

Sn00py

Sn00py said:

Hello, In 2011 I had a joint bank account with my aunt. I was responsible for growing the savings account and she/we had around £150,000 in the account but then in 2014 my aunt was diagnosed with dementia. As Power of Attorney I continued to look after the account. In 2019 she had to go into a care home paying around £1,200 a week out of our joint bank account.

Recently a friend told me that 50% of what was in the joint account was legally mine but over the last nearly 5 years the money has gone down to around £15,000. I genuinely thought that because of her diagnosis I could not touch the money. Now social services have stepped in to pay for the care home and they will back date the payment to 1 March this year when we last had around £23,350 in the account. The care home have agreed to refund the extra that was paid, around £11,000; this will take the account over the £23,350 limit but will this mean she has to start contributing to her own care again?

My other question is, was my friend right and would I have been within my rights to take half the money back then, and can I still do this now with what's left?  My second question is, can I claim my half of the money back from social services? Probably not, but this is going to haunt me until I get to the bottom of it. Of course I would never see my aunt go short of anything and if the law states there is nothing I can do, so be it. Please can anyone help shed any light on this please as it is now keeping me awake at night.

Hello, I should have included that I transferred some of my own money into her account' approximately £50k.

Ayr_Rage

You should have taken all your contributions out when your aunt became ill and then run the account under the PoA as if it belonged to her alone as it then only contained her money.

I cannot see you will be entitled to anything apart from half the current balance, obviously with proof of your original deposit.

You have no claim with social services.

PHK

You’d be better posting this in the Banking forum rather than mobile phones. 

Keep_pedalling

PHK said:

You’d be better posting this in the Banking forum rather than mobile phones. 

I asked to have it moved yesterday.

Keep_pedalling

Sn00py said:

Sn00py said:

Hello, In 2011 I had a joint bank account with my aunt. I was responsible for growing the savings account and she/we had around £150,000 in the account but then in 2014 my aunt was diagnosed with dementia. As Power of Attorney I continued to look after the account. In 2019 she had to go into a care home paying around £1,200 a week out of our joint bank account.

Recently a friend told me that 50% of what was in the joint account was legally mine but over the last nearly 5 years the money has gone down to around £15,000. I genuinely thought that because of her diagnosis I could not touch the money. Now social services have stepped in to pay for the care home and they will back date the payment to 1 March this year when we last had around £23,350 in the account. The care home have agreed to refund the extra that was paid, around £11,000; this will take the account over the £23,350 limit but will this mean she has to start contributing to her own care again?

My other question is, was my friend right and would I have been within my rights to take half the money back then, and can I still do this now with what's left?  My second question is, can I claim my half of the money back from social services? Probably not, but this is going to haunt me until I get to the bottom of it. Of course I would never see my aunt go short of anything and if the law states there is nothing I can do, so be it. Please can anyone help shed any light on this please as it is now keeping me awake at night.

Hello, I should have included that I transferred some of my own money into her account' approximately £50k.

That rather complicates things and I am not sure how you can undo it. If you have evidence of the transfer then you should be able to transfer what’s left to you, but I don’t see how you can get the rest back. You need to speak to the LA who are the ones who should have been paying once her money dropped below the savings limits, the care home are not responsible for paying back the fees they were owed.