As joint account owner, I would open an account in my name only, then transfer all the funds from the account with your mother on it into your new account. Will your mother okay this or is she incapacitated? A person with a POA has the right to act in place of the person named and your father can access her/your account.
Assuming you are talking about financial POA and not Medical POA, then yes, he can sign checks on her behalf. He would sign them as John Doe, Power of Attorney for Jane Doe.
Since you apparently don't trust him, you might consider moving some of those funds into a different account - one in your name only. Dribble money back in as necessary and keep your own funds out of that account.
My brother has durable POA for our mother and all he had to do was show up at the bank with the document in hand and his name was put on the account immediately with no questions.
No, her husband cannot use his POA to clean out the joint account that you have with your mother unless his name is on the account also as a joint owner. If his name is not on the account as a joint owner, then you need to find a lawyer and report this illegal action.
Does anyone know what an LLC is? There was one on property we are to inheirent from my aunt and uncle. It is for 500,000. My realtor nor attorney say they have never seen this in a living trust. I asked my uncle but did not get a straight answer (some dementia 89) my aunt passed 4 years ago. HELP
First off - what state do you live in? Second - what kind of POA does he have? Third - is the joint account currently an AND or an OR (do both of you have to sign or only one of you)
Go to the bank and find out. Let me share a little something with you. My spouse had a joint account with my MIL. the MIL was NOT married but lived with a man for many years. Most people THOUGHT they were married. MIL passed away late last year - we had not been monitoring the joint account as it would have opened a can of worms for a host of reasons. After she died, we found out on one day MIL did her normal banking - she ran like clockwork. The next day she woke up and had a need to transfer $20,000 to the man she was living with, BUT she was "too ill" to go into the bank to make the largest transaction of her life. When the man was asked about the money, he went ballastic and said he didn't even know she had "given him the money until he got his bank statement the next month, that we'd have to talk to the teller who did the transaction". This couple had not shared finances in more than a decade. When the teller was asked about the transaction she said "I did it because she was known to me, she wasn't well enough to come that day". There is no recording of the phone call. The bank told us to get a lawyer and/or file charges against him because they didn't have to tell us anything else. So we did file a police report -- not just for this but because there were check forgeries while she was dying for a rental property she owned -- her rental income stopped going into her normal account and suddenly started going into this other account. The police did investigate and was told - MIL was added to a DORMANT account the man owned at the time of the $20,000 transaction. We have been asking for months to see the signature card that would have put her on his account since he claims he had no knowledge of the transaction. Because you would think that financial institutions cannot just add someone to someone elses account without the account owners permission -- but you know, when the teller knows you, or thinks they know what your MIL's relationship with the man is, they can do whatever they want to be "Helpful". The fraud department at the bank (which is really a credit union), actually told my spouse - you don't know what your mother's relationship with the man was. HA! Well let's see, we know he was telling us not to visit and deleting emails from her account - a neighbor password protected her device to put a stop to him doing that. We know she got 100 Oxycontin and 2 days later got another 100 (shame on CVS for not redflagging that!). We know he was looking at moving into an assisted living center and her biggest fear is she'd have to go to a nursing home.. Oh....and have I mentioned her death certificate says she died of end stage dementia. Sooo....there are federal regulating bodies that are suppose to help, so a complaint was filed with the one who regulates credit unions. Did you know that they only handle EFT problems -- and because MIL didn't call the 800# and use a PIN number it isn't their area, that it would be a state regulatory body? IF your mother has a joint account with you thinking she was protecting her assets from HIM she could be sadly mistaken. You can't remove her name from that joint account without a death certificate, but if you are an OR on the account you can move all the money into an account under your name and then pay whatever bills she usually pays out of her account from it. We have no idea where all this will go next -- I can tell you it feels like they make the "process" so exhausting that you just want to walk away. If anyone had told us this story before we lived it ourselves, we wouldn't have believed it, because it all supposedly started with a "nice teller" thinking she was doing a long time customer a favor. And the teller supposedly did it this way so my MIL nor the man would have to pay "federal gift tax" on the money because in 2013 the allowed amount was $14,000. Sadly the teller NEVER considered the reason MIL didn't go into the bank and do this xfer face to face is she felt threatened, and was doing what she thought would prevent her from going to a nursing home.
I agree with Ferris. The easiest thing is to open a new account in your name only and transfer the funds if you have any doubts as to the step father's integrity.
Assuming you are talking about financial POA and not Medical POA, then yes, he can sign checks on her behalf. He would sign them as John Doe, Power of Attorney for Jane Doe.
Since you apparently don't trust him, you might consider moving some of those funds into a different account - one in your name only. Dribble money back in as necessary and keep your own funds out of that account.
Second - what kind of POA does he have?
Third - is the joint account currently an AND or an OR (do both of you have to sign or only one of you)
Go to the bank and find out. Let me share a little something with you.
My spouse had a joint account with my MIL. the MIL was NOT married but lived with a man for many years. Most people THOUGHT they were married. MIL passed away late last year - we had not been monitoring the joint account as it would have opened a can of worms for a host of reasons. After she died, we found out on one day MIL did her normal banking - she ran like clockwork. The next day she woke up and had a need to transfer $20,000 to the man she was living with, BUT she was "too ill" to go into the bank to make the largest transaction of her life. When the man was asked about the money, he went ballastic and said he didn't even know she had "given him the money until he got his bank statement the next month, that we'd have to talk to the teller who did the transaction". This couple had not shared finances in more than a decade. When the teller was asked about the transaction she said "I did it because she was known to me, she wasn't well enough to come that day". There is no recording of the phone call. The bank told us to get a lawyer and/or file charges against him because they didn't have to tell us anything else. So we did file a police report -- not just for this but because there were check forgeries while she was dying for a rental property she owned -- her rental income stopped going into her normal account and suddenly started going into this other account. The police did investigate and was told - MIL was added to a DORMANT account the man owned at the time of the $20,000 transaction. We have been asking for months to see the signature card that would have put her on his account since he claims he had no knowledge of the transaction. Because you would think that financial institutions cannot just add someone to someone elses account without the account owners permission -- but you know, when the teller knows you, or thinks they know what your MIL's relationship with the man is, they can do whatever they want to be "Helpful". The fraud department at the bank (which is really a credit union), actually told my spouse - you don't know what your mother's relationship with the man was. HA! Well let's see, we know he was telling us not to visit and deleting emails from her account - a neighbor password protected her device to put a stop to him doing that. We know she got 100 Oxycontin and 2 days later got another 100 (shame on CVS for not redflagging that!). We know he was looking at moving into an assisted living center and her biggest fear is she'd have to go to a nursing home.. Oh....and have I mentioned her death certificate says she died of end stage dementia. Sooo....there are federal regulating bodies that are suppose to help, so a complaint was filed with the one who regulates credit unions. Did you know that they only handle EFT problems -- and because MIL didn't call the 800# and use a PIN number it isn't their area, that it would be a state regulatory body? IF your mother has a joint account with you thinking she was protecting her assets from HIM she could be sadly mistaken. You can't remove her name from that joint account without a death certificate, but if you are an OR on the account you can move all the money into an account under your name and then pay whatever bills she usually pays out of her account from it. We have no idea where all this will go next -- I can tell you it feels like they make the "process" so exhausting that you just want to walk away. If anyone had told us this story before we lived it ourselves, we wouldn't have believed it, because it all supposedly started with a "nice teller" thinking she was doing a long time customer a favor. And the teller supposedly did it this way so my MIL nor the man would have to pay "federal gift tax" on the money because in 2013 the allowed amount was $14,000. Sadly the teller NEVER considered the reason MIL didn't go into the bank and do this xfer face to face is she felt threatened, and was doing what she thought would prevent her from going to a nursing home.
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