My name on my parent's accounts

[brendamc67]

Oh my gosh! I never thought of this. I am a signer on my mom's account. She gets her social security and pension deposited into it. I have signed maybe three checks for her since she added me. My other sister is also on this account. I am wondering if I should just have her remove my name? We go see an attorney next weekend, so hopefully she will be able to answer this one. Did anyone ever talk to their attorney about it? I just want to make sure that Mom's account isn't frozen or something like that!!

[ssmdem]

My attorney said it wouldn't make a difference, but if I was concerned, I could have mine take my name off. We're a ways out from filing - so don't know if that made the difference or not. I was just a signer on my parent's account - my husband was a co-owner on his dad's. His dad banks at a credit union, so they didn't have him close the account to remove his name like most banks do - they were able to just take it off. My parents were able to just remove me as a signer as well. She said we didn't even have to mention the accounts and if it ever came up, we go at it from the standpoint of "It's their money, they can do with it as they please."

[CreditCretin]

My Attorney said it wouldn't make a difference either, as both my wife and I are signers on our parents accounts. The parents put us on as signers only if they became unable to take care of their own business affairs. In our case, he asked us if we'd ever written checks from these accounts, which we had not (thank goodness have never needed to.) He also asked us the amounts in the accounts, is less then 2500 in each of the accounts.

Apparently there was a recent ruling from the BK Judge in our county that the money in someone else's account that you are simply a signer on, could not be used to pay a debtor's creditors, since the funds did not legally belong to the debtor.

He said the same goes for money we have in our kids savings accounts. They are in our kids names by the wife is a custodian. It is less than 1200 total between the two accounts, but totally not our money, it is money the kids got from baptisms, birthday parties, grandparents, etc.. Not our money at all. The Attorney said that wouldn't be a problem either as the amount is small and it can be proven it wasn't our money and it's not like large deposits have been made into it recently etc. Maybe this is the way it is in our district?