Joint bank accounts
March 29th, 2008 by Questions
If a spouse files bankruptcy and the spouse is joint on the account but never contributed savings to the account and the the money owed (line of credit in spouses name)and the institution is the same. What is the status of the joint account?
One Response to “Joint bank accounts”
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March 31, 2008 at 9:10 am, Barton Goth GCO Bankruptcy Trustees said:
Technically teh rights of the bank are stayed against the spouse, assuming you haven’t been connected to any of that debt. This means they shouldn’t have any ability to take money out of the account for payment of the debts. The problem is that the banks are very large, and information like a bankruptcy take a long time to be conveyed among all the different levels of the istitution. So the risk is that the local collections office sill exercise the right of set-off (i.e. scoop money out of the account) to repay some of the loans. Legally this shouldn’t be done, and the trustee can get the money back, but as soon as the trustee does so it becomes and estate asset not your asset and is part of the bankruptcy. So the moral of the story is to either remover your spouse as joint from the account or move your money into an account that is just in your name.