Q: My sister and I are listed as joint owners on our mother's savings account. After our mother passes away, can we legally close the account to use the money to pay for funeral expenses?
A: It's pretty common for children to be added to bank accounts so that they can get to the funds in the event the parent dies. The short answer to your question is, yes, you should be able to access the funds in the account after your mother's death. The long answer, however, is you will have to jump through a few hoops to get to the funds.
Before the bank will release funds to you, as surviving joint owner, you will likely have to provide a consent to transfer signed by the county assessor's office.
A consent to transfer essentially is a release that the state gives, allowing the release of an asset to a surviving joint owner, beneficiary or other person entitled to the asset.
However, before the assessor's office is willing to sign a consent, it will ask for certain things, including, but not limited to, a death certificate. It has been my experience that the assessor's office is reluctant to sign off on a consent until it has been provided proof that the decedent is in fact deceased.
Like the assessor's office, the bank will want proof that one of the joint owners is deceased. The bank will insist on seeing a death certificate.
What I'm trying to say is that the real factor determining how quickly an account can be released is how quickly you can obtain a death certificate.
Fortunately, the local health departments are really efficient at getting death certificates completed and available to the family. Unless there are problems, such as not being able to determine the cause of death, the local health departments complete death certificates within a couple of days.
However, what sometimes happens is a joint owner goes directly from the hospital to the bank, and sort of forgets to mention that mom died. The bank doesn't know mom passed away and releases the money to the joint owner. This happens a lot.
The real problem with this is the bank may be breaking the law by releasing the funds without the consent. Since I work for a bank and I'm in the assessor's office all of the time, I don't like it when the assessor lets me know that my bank released an account without a consent.
It puts me in an awkward position and it takes time for me to look into what happened.
What all of this means is, yes, you can get to the money in the joint account to pay for the funeral expenses. It will just take a couple of days to do it.
Wait for the death certificate to be issued and follow the appropriate process. Funeral homes understand that it may take a couple of days to obtain the money to pay them for their services.
Opinions expressed solely are those of the writer. Christopher W. Yugo is a member of the Indiana Bar and a vice president and senior trust officer for First National Bank's Trust Department. Address questions to Yugo in care of The Times, 601 W. 45th Ave., Munster, IN 46321. Yugo's information is meant to be general in nature. Specific legal, tax, or insurance questions should be referred to your attorney, accountant, or estate-planning specialist.
