Personal Finance Advice

Your loved one is sick and needs someone else to pay the bills, otherwise everything will go delinquent. You need access to your loved one’s account in order to pay the bills so you go to your loved one’s bank to explain the situation and request access to the account. You hope that it will be a simple process because you don’t want to let your loved one down by allowing all the bills to go delinquent. After all, if your loved one recovers from the illness, the last thing you want him or her to deal with is a pile of late bills, right?

Good luck. Chances are, no financial institution is going to grant you any access to an account that does not have your name on it. Even if it’s your father, your brother, or your best friend since you were three years old, unless your name is listed on the account as an authorized user then there is very little chance that a financial institution will give you any sort of information about the account, let alone allow you access to the account.

Look at the situation from the perspective of the financial institution. Even if you can prove your relationship to the account holder, how is the financial institution supposed to know for sure that you aren’t out to steal money from the account? You may be the account holder’s sibling, but how does the bank or credit union know you aren’t the account holder’s deadbeat sibling? Your relationship to your loved one does not entitle you to access to financial information. The only thing that entitles you to account information in this situation is if you are granted access by the account holder in one way or another.

This is when a power of attorney comes in handy, but if your loved one did not secure one for you beforehand then it is something that you will have to obtain using legal means. This can be a tedious process and in the meantime your loved one’s financial affairs can start falling behind. You should also keep in mind that some financial institutions will not accept general power of attorneys, but instead want the power of attorney to have specific account information or for the account holder to file a document with the financial institution that is like a power of attorney but is an in-house document.

Don’t assume that you can simply walk into a financial institution and take over someone’s finances per that person’s request. There is a lot more to it than that, and it’s all because financial institutions want to protect their account holders from fraud.