Wife's use of my bank accounts.

mowerman2

My wife and I are elderly. All bank and savings online accounts are in my sole name although we both accept the monies are jointly owned. My wife has full access to these accounts with passwords etc although she very rarely uses them.

Upon my demise can she withdraw from these accounts or do I first have to give written permission for her to do so?

Thanks

eskbanker

You should make at least one of them joint - if you predecease her then she's obliged to notify the banks (and many other organisations) of this, and they'll immediately prevent the accounts being usable if they're in your sole name.

SVaz

She will not have access once you die, even with Power of Attorney  best to make them joint accounts now.  
She would have to go through their bereavement departments and show them your death certificate, usually by uploading the death certificate to their portal,  depending on the amounts in the accounts, she might also need Probate,  which can take weeks.

She would also have the rigmarole of putting the Utilities etc.  into her name.

Albermarle

As far as I know, what you are doing now is not strictly legal.
 If you died tomorrow she should really not access your accounts, until the death has been registered with the bank. Even then she may have to wait for probate.
Ideally you should have joint accounts, or you can have a formal agreement with your bank that a third party can access your account ( your wife). However this would only really work if all your current and savings accounts are with one bank and I think would probably lapse when you died.
Having joint accounts now , will largely solve any post death issues.

born_again

mowerman2 said:

My wife and I are elderly. All bank and savings online accounts are in my sole name although we both accept the monies are jointly owned. My wife has full access to these accounts with passwords etc although she very rarely uses them.

Upon my demise can she withdraw from these accounts or do I first have to give written permission for her to do so?

Thanks

It is technically against your banks T/C for anyone else to access your bank account.

Get them turned into joint accounts.

eskbanker

Albermarle said:

As far as I know, what you are doing now is not strictly legal.

Surely it'll be in breach of bank Ts & Cs but unlikely to be illegal as such?

SVaz

There are also horror stories of elderly people unable to open their own bank accounts because they have no photo ID. 

maman

Of course, trying to change the accounts to joint ones is good advice. I have read on here that, changing to joint accounts can be long winded and complicated,so check with your bank what it entails. Another solution would be for your wife to open an account and you transfer some funds into that. 

Veteransaver

We had a similar "issue" when my father died suddenly. Him and my mum had a joint account, but he had swept most of it into savings accounts (with the same bank) but they were in his name only. So legally I suppose my mum only had access to a few hundred quid in the joint account.
So as we had all the log in details we just swept all the money back to the joint account before we notified the bank of his death. Yes technically probably not legal but no one is realistically going to do anything about it!

born_again

SVaz said:

There are also horror stories of elderly people unable to open their own bank accounts because they have no photo ID. 

My wife has no photo ID, but still opened a bank account.

SVaz

Maybe in person, I doubt you could do it online.
Just opened a new ISA, had to upload passport photo page.