Is it legal to open online accounts in mother’s name?
My sister opened an online stock account and placed Mother’s stocks in them (held in the name of Mother’s trust), then has all the account information sent only to her. My Mother didn’t request this, sister was only supposed to mail all the paperwork to place everything into the trust. Mother is totally competent to handle her own affairs, but sister has taken it upon herself to control everything. She told us today she would never give us the username or password. I told her I thought it was illegal to open an account in someone else’s name, but she still refused any help. Mother was very upset by the whole argument saying she never agreed to that. She feels like her daughter just took away her money. I told sister I would call a lawyer and we should all sit down and talk. She said she will never share any information with us. Isn’t this illegal? Should I get some elder abuse people involved? Last year she started having all Mother’s mail sent to her house. Now this happened! How do I fix this? My sister has no poa or guardianship over my Mother. My Mother can’t understand why my sister did this and neither can I. Ugh!
5 Answers
Popular Questions
- I'm afraid my sister is trying to steal all of my mom’s money by being on joint accounts with her. What can I do to protect my mom?
- What is the reasonable amount for a child to receive as payment for caring for their elderly parent?
- The nursing home is holding my Mother "hostage" with a POA that was forged. Any help?
Related Questions
- I called OPM but they said they do not accept my POA. Am I now in legal trouble because I didn't know that I needed to be a representative payee?
- Can I transfer my mom's money from one account to another without a POA?
- If you put your name on an elderly parent's checking account, are you liable for their unpaid bills?
- Any advice when meeting with a Medi-cal attorney?
Who is giving you all of this information? I see from your profile that your Mom has Alzheimer's/Dementia.... is she telling you this? Could be there is a Trust but with your Mom's memory she doesn't remember doing this.
There does come a time when us children need to start overseeing our parent's bill paying and bank accounts. I took over when I noticed my Dad was throwing away active bills thinking they were junk mail.
If there is a Revocable Trust, I see nothing wrong with the Trustee [which would be your sister] making sure the money/stocks are all in a Trust. My Dad had stocks scattered everywhere, so I was able to put the stocks all with one Broker... and put all the checking/savings accounts with one bank.... makes life so much easier then dealing with a ton a paperwork from dozens of financial institutions.
She probably is trying to make your mother's life easier and save her paperwork headaches.
The way she is going about it is SO out of order.
How would she like it if you'd done that, and then got narky about it when she asked questions?
You can probably find out from the firms' own websites what their regulations are about opening accounts on behalf of third parties. But in these days of practically paranoid anti-money laundering regulation I'd be astonished if what she's done is procedurally correct. Total transparency is the order of the day, after all.
But keep talking to her, and try to hang on to your temper. The probability, on current information anyway, is that she hasn't done anything evil with the money and she is trying to benefit your mother financially. Somehow, she has to be made to understand that there Most Certainly Is A Problem Here and if she will not share information with your mother - !!!!! - then you are, reluctantly, going to have to take formal steps.