One thing to keep in mind in a situation like this is that you’ll likely end up with unequal amounts because there will be unequal amounts in the various accounts. Depending on who’s the beneficiary of each account, you’ll get some accounts and your sister will get some others. So maybe you end up with $30k and your sister gets $20k. It’ll be up to you both at the end to decide if the person with the most writes a check to the other person to equalize things. That has nothing to do with the estate, probate, or the executor.
Basically, the money will be handled like this:
Joint account with mom and someone else: That someone else gets the money
Account where mom is the only owner and a beneficiary is specified: The beneficiary gets the money
Account owned by a trust: Handled however the trust specifies
It’s the stuff left over that will be handled by the will. So if there’s an account where your mom was the only owner and there wasn’t a beneficiary, that will be distributed according to the will. But it sounds like your mom won’t have much of that since she used trusts and beneficiaries. That might mean the only stuff for the will to distribute might be the household goods, furniture, car, and stuff like that. It sounds like the financial accounts all might have a joint owner or beneficiary and will be moved to the new owners outside of will.
I’m not an expert so you may want to consult with an actual lawyer. But I do a lot of work in banking operations.
Most of the compliance part that I’ve been involved with relates to making sure the customer is who they say they are when they open an account (CIPs, KYC/AML, credit checks, etc) or anti fraud, not the part that happens after someone dies. So take that with a grain of salt.
I imagine a couple of things could happen:
A fraud alert is tripped by some system noticing a withdrawal has been made after the owner has died
Depending how you transfer the money (wire transfer or ACH) it may not clear settlement.
Or nothing happens. As far as the bank is concerned, the account was accessed legitimately and a legitimate transaction occurred.
I don’t think you would be creating any crime anyway as you and your sister are named as sole beneficiaries. But you may create some bureaucratic headaches for yourselves.
I’m treasurer of our HOA, and since we have a fair number of older residents, many of our dues payments are made by check. Lately I’d been noticing checks with POD on them, and been wondering what that meant. Thanks for the education!
I’m watching my spouse go through this now and I have to sit on my hands and leave the room when he gets on the phone to lil bro who is executor.
It’s been months and months and a fairly straightforward estate is not yet settled. It’s complicated by his declining health and inevitable divorce. It’s been difficult to get straight answers and shit that should’ve been done by now he struggles to complete. Also he has control issues esp wrt to money and is getting strong pushback from another sibling to write the damn checks. So lil bro is dragging it out. Lil bro also has, I’ll call them unusual, behaviors wrt to banking. Stuff that makes no sense to us, the way he and his wife manage their income, whatever.
Just write the damn checks to beneficiaries already!
My FIL passed away a few weeks ago, my wife is handling all the financials. His bank accounts were frozen by the bank soon after, waiting for my wife to complete the probate process.
My understanding is that funeral homes generally notify SS - and that would most likely be before the family receives the death certificate. And banks typically check records against check the SS death master file monthly or even weekly.
I used to work for a small credit union and we would monitor the obituaries in the newspaper. That’s probably not practical at a larger institution but we were small enough that we could do that. We wouldn’t necessarily freeze an account when we found out the owner died, but we would flag it and monitor any activity until the account was closed out.
FWIW:
When my dad died, my sister and I were taking care of moving my mom into assisted living, and getting the house put on the market, etc. My parents had a trust that stipulated that we were both 50/50 beneficiaries. We had agreed that using my dad’s credit card to pay for expenses made the most sense, so we didn’t have to re-imburse one another after the fact. She was pumping gas, and (for whatever reason) called the credit card company to ask them a question, and as soon as she mentioned my father’s death, they cut off the card. She had to pay with a different card to get her gas.