HELP ! Just realized something that could cause a big problem !

[keptdigging]

clearslate's experience is more what I expected: that the mere act of adding a name doesn't constitute a transfer of property. And this is common, and it's hard to imagine judges seeing it this way (letting TTs take non-elderly retirement funds away for their children's bk because of a common paperwork practice.) NOW if funds were comingled, or the account was actually used by the bk debtor, that might be a whole different situation.

I'm also skeptical that joint always means 50/50. If I have access to funds in my mom's account, then ALL of those funds were available to pay my creditors.

Except that I suspect asking my mom to put me on her account so I can help her with her finances, and then draining the account of HER funds to pay MY creditors might actually be seen as a crime: some sort of fraud or theft. If mom wanted to help me pay my creditors, I'd be damned sure that HER signature was on the check.

I do know that access to funds/property is not the same as it being legal to appropriate it for my own use.

And I find it hard to believe that judges/courts would allow the hypertechnical to take precedence over fairness and intent with respect to the savings of the elderly.

[enuffznuff]

I would think that in a situation like this they would also look at the history of the account. I think just having POA puts you in a completely different category than a joint account. As a joint account holder, you're legally entitled to the contents of the account at any time. As a POA, you are governed by the terms of the POA agreement, which generally contain language referring to acting in the interests of the actual account holder, which would preclude misusing the funds for your own use. They also generally spell out that the funds belong to the account holder and that the POA simply has the power to act in the account holder's stead, for their best interests, should they be unable to do so.
However, if a SPOUSE were to put their hub/wife as POA on an account, then the POA paid bills and wrote checks off it on a consistent basis, it would probably be an unsuccessful argument to try to say "oh but I can't use that money, I'm just POA".