I found 2 CD’s in my mom’s safe. Thought the money would be useful while the lawyer is handling her estate.
I took the CD’s to the issuing bank and they said the CD’s had already been cashed. They gave me the dates. Walking out with nothing added to my checking account was a huge disappointment.
Why would my mom have the originals? Aren’t CD’s turned in when they’re cashed? Much like a check?
What’s the standard procedure?
I’ve never needed to turn in anything to close or renew a CD. The last one that came due, I didn’t even have to go to the bank. I just asked them to deposit it into my checking account.
I haven’t had a paper certificate of deposit in I don’t know how many decades. How old were those?
It’s not like a check. It’s a monetary instrument, so there’s no need to turn it in when it is sold. Why she kept them is anyone’s guess.
Put it in a CD player and enjoy the music?
Seriously, I’ve never had a paper certificate for a CD, and I’ve held CDs for 20+ years.
I thought the paper copies were just a receipt. Are there still ‘bearer bonds’? I thought they were eliminated because they could be used to avoid taxes, launder money, and also be easily forged.
Good Morning, I’d like to redeem my 300 hours of free AOL, please.
BTW, if the CDs hadn’t already been cashed in, shouldn’t they have been added to the estate? In other words, wasn’t the right thing to give them to the lawyer?
The CD’s were in both names. My mom and me. Same as the checking account.
One was from 2011 and the other 2015? The largest was cashed in about the time mom bought her small 1200 sq ft retirement home. It took 3 years to sell the bigger place and a lot of money was tied up in it.
She used to routinely keep ready cash in CDs. Buy more when they matured. But she stopped in her later years. She didn’t follow her stock investments or look for high interest CD’s any more.
Oh well. I was briefly excited at a possible windfall.
It took a trip to the bank to find out otherwise.
Cd’s used to be (like 1970s) more like a bond. You had a certificate that was really a valuable piece of paper that you turned in to redeem for cash or to renew for another term. Kinda like savings bonds used to be.
Ever since maybe the 1980s(?) they’ve been just another kind of account at the bank. Those papers your Mom saved were in effect a deposit receipt for her opening those two accounts. All the rest of the history of those accounts would have been in her monthly statements while the accounts were live, and the statement9s) of the month(s) she redeemed them.
My mother chases interest rates for her CDs as well. She even goes as far as to ask bank tellers if they’ll match the interest rate being offered by another bank or credit union. (Surprisingly, they did, though the size of the account helped.)
In the old days (1960’s and 70’s) CDs had an actual paper Certificate that was an important part of the account. When you bought a CD, the bank sent you that Certificate, and you turned it back in when you cashed out the CD. But the bank also had records of this, and if the actual Certificate was lost, they could give you the cash based on their records, and various sworn documents you had to sign & notarize. (I had to do this once when I became Treasurer for an organization, and they had CDs from the 1950’s where the Certificates were lost, and the previous Treasurers were dead. Took a fair amount of paperwork, even a formal resolution by the Board of the organization. Also had some War Bonds from the 1940’s, but there I found the actual bonds.)
Toward the end of the 1970’s, a CD became more of a certified receipt for the account held at the bank, and if you could give the bank the numbers off the Certificate (and you were the recorded owner, and were transferring the cash into an account under the same name), they would cash it without requiring the actual Certificate. 10 days after the transaction was completed, they would send you a notice that the CD was terminated and that you could destroy the Certificate.
Now I think it’s even simpler. Works much like a regular account, mostly done online, just with specific deposit amounts and designated time periods at a specified interest rate.
Thank you @Tim_T-Bonham.net
My mom was older and accustomed to the original procedures. That explains keeping the paper doc in a safe when it wasn’t required.