My sister and mothers joint account problem

Question

My sister and mother have a joint account and last night my sister wanted to subscribe to something and tried to but it said she didn't have enough money and everything in their account which she has made about 2000.00 over last month and asked my mom and she said that they had no money in their account and when my sister asked to see her check register my mom just shut up and tried to change the subject. So me and my sister that night looked through the house and found 5 unopened bank statements and showed that she has spent her money for food and her bills using my sister's ******* money to pay bills and my mom has 5 credit cards even one under my deceased grandma and i found some bills today and may 11th of this year my mom recieved a bill from the water company saying that they have not recieved a payment since march of this year i don't know if she has payed and water bills since may but this is getting out of hand she is bringing the family down and god knows how much she is in debt.

My question is is their a way for my sister to get out of the joint account without my mom knowing?

Answer 1

It depends who the account holder is.  If your sister is the primary account holder she can kick your mom out of the account but if your mom is the primary account holder then she has to remove your sister.  Tell your sis to open another account  

Answer 2

She can go to the bank and asked that her name be removed from the joint account.  She needs to open her own account in her name.  Your mother will know that she has removed her name when she gets the next statement.  Your sisters name will not be on it.  Considering what is going on however I think she would have a good reason for doing this.  Sounds like you guys could be fending for yourself before long.  If she isn't' paying the utilities then she probably is not paying the rent or mortgage.  Your Mom may have more problems than even you are aware of.  Opening an account in a deceased person's name is a crime.  Good Luck.

Answer 3

yes she can go to the bank and take her name off the acc but if yor mum has an overdraft on the acc she cant.

my advise is most banks have telephone banking and they can freeze the acc so it cant be used.  If they refuse to do it over the phone the branch can put an indicator on the acc to stop her from using it.

I think both of you sld check your credit files and make sure she hasnt took credit out in your names (if she has and u dont know about it it can wreck ur credit rating to)

you can do that with experian or privacy guard.  I wld recomend privacy guard cos they can help to remove anything

also you will need to confront your mom, the longer she leaves the debt the harder the problem

take care

Answer 4

There is a way to get out of the account. Your sister can cancel the account if she is the primary. There is always a primary in a joint account.

If not, she will just have to open a new account without your mother, open it as a single account and start over.

I ran across this issue before and generally if the account is in the negative they won't close it anyway. Not sure if it got this far, but if so then all she can do is alert the bank and hope they understand enough to see that the deposits are from your sister and the withdrawals are from your mom, showing where the responsibility lies in the situation, hence giving your sister authority to close the account.