OP, no matter how much you trust her, your fiancée should not have your PIN. She makes more money than you and surely has savings of her own. You should not have her PIN, either. And neither of you should store that info on your phones.
There’s simply no need. If you’re incapacitated, whoever has financial power of attorney will be able to access your bank accounts (without a PIN) and pay your bills. You should have or get a will, a financial power of attorney, a medical power of attorney, and a living will, not because you’re in imminent danger but because you’re ad adult.
You’ve probably mentioned somewhere on this thread but a few other questions:
How would you describe your fiancee’s relationship with her parents?
Also, is your fiancee one of the more successful ones in the family?
There’s obviously some major issues with dynamics in the family. I’m wondering if your fiancee is regarded as being the ‘lucky’ one and maybe there’s some pressure on her to be a ‘good’ family member and to share her spoils (even if that means spoils that aren’t hers) with everyone else. I’m obviously just speculating and playing armchair shrink at this point, but just figured I’d ask.
After all this, my thought is that the only way this can possibly work is if you and your fiancee get some real separation between yourselves and them, and she’ll have to be a buffer. And by buffer that means not just keeping you away from their drama but making sure that nothing they do can impact you. Just know that if you decide to go forward, you do marry into families. That is just reality. You can lay down ground rules, but she’s marrying into your baggage (and I’m sure you’ve got yours, just like I’ve got mine and she’s got hers, and so does everyone reading this) – and as you’ve found out, you’re marrying into hers. I don’t think you can change their family; life is sometimes (often) just about reckoning with occasionally bad situations and figuring out a way to deal with it.
With a family like this, your fiancee should put a lock on her credit and subscribe to a credit monitoring service. It would be trivially easy for a family member to start opening credit cards and getting loans in her name since they likely know all the relevant identity details needed for the application. And remember that most all married debt is legally shared. Any credit card balance or loan in her name is also going to be your debt and your responsibility.
In this case it was a cash deposit into an account he owns, one that he has a police report about, and the bank is aware of all of this. I’m guessing that they were accommodating because they know his situation. He didn’t walk into it cold. I’m personally not surprised.
I also don’t recommend sharing PINs with the fiancée. Not even because you shouldn’t trust her or her family situation. My wife and I have been married 7 years and we’ve never shared that info, it’s just not necessary. We have separate accounts and on the rare occasion she needs money it’s a piece of cake to send it to her; it takes seconds with my bank’s app. Sharing a PIN is just taking on unnecessary risk, which burned you.
"My wife’s sister (not the one who got my PIN and took money from my account, and not the other half sister who caused the carjacking incident, but another one) has opened several credit cards in my wife’s name. Now there is all this unpaid debt. And there might be a mortgage on our house as well. Since we’re married, this problem is now mine.
I’m going to look into what to do, but the family does not want to make waves with this (other) fraudulent sister."
My wife and I have been married for decades. We share absolutely everything. We have no accounts that are not joint.
On our checking accounts (one primary, one spare), we each have our own ATM/debit card to both accounts and all 4 cards have different PINs. I know my two; she knows her two. Not that we don’t trust each other with the info, and besides, either card & PIN connects to the same pile of dollars. It’s just that proper compliance with the regulations requires we keep our PINs separate and known to no one else. That’s part of what protects our rights to redress if some bad guy/gal does somehow get into our account.
What about the $1000 in purchases she made with the debit card? I know the bank returned that money to you, but they will certainly be pursuing that illegal activity so they can recoup their own lost funds.
I’m not going to say you and your wife should know each others PINs. My husband and I don’t know each other’s either. But it’s not because I’m afraid that we’ll be screwed if someone else somehow gets into our account* - I can’t see how the bank would even know that my husband typed my PIN in at the ATM/cash register rather than me if no one was disputing that charge.
It’s because we have joint accounts and we each have cards , so there’s really no reason for him to type in the PIN if my card was used. Who wants to remember twice as many PINS for no reason?
Yes, the bank did accommodate the requests but I’m surprised. There’s no upside for the bank to do this and significant liability. Suppose a viewer flies into a rage and violently confronts someone they thought they saw in the footage.
I’m surprised too. This was a deposit, which could have come from anywhere. Not obviously part of any theft case. Police would have no interest in this… but sure, roll tape. Really?
I was only able to see the footage of the withdrawals because I had filed a police report. The case hasn’t been closed out, and so the branch manager was willing to let me see the deposit footage. I don’t know if that’s their SOP, or if she did me a favor because she recognized me as a long-term customer.
I will note here that the bank would be pressing charges regarding the $1,000 of purchases that were refunded, NOT the ATM withdrawals that are proven to have been made by F-SIL.
Superdude seems to know it was her as he indicated a couple posts up. And I assume the police have talked to him and he has conveyed that info. Plus, I’m guessing the bank can put two and two together and have the police go directly to her, review business footage, etc.