Can a widow access money in her husband's bank account?

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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Husband and wife were/are customers of AIB.

Husband dies with €50,000 in his current account.

Can his widow access this without taking out probate.

There is a will and she gets his entire estate.

She is very stuck and needs the money.

Does the bank have any discretion to pay out other than funeral expenses?
 
In case it helps at all?

Access to money after a death

It can be difficult to get immediate access to a deceased person's money in Ireland unless it is in a joint account. Find out more here.
www.citizensinformation.ie www.citizensinformation.ie

Money in bank accounts​

If money is held in the deceased person’s name only, then family members usually cannot get access until probate is granted to the personal representative. But if the amount in an account is small, the bank may release it to the personal representative or the next of kin.

Bank accounts in joint names​

If the bank account is in the joint names of your loved one and their spouse or civil partner, the money can usually be transferred into the surviving spouse or civil partner’s name. You will need the death certificate to do this.
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heritagehomecare.ie

Managing a deceased person's bank accounts - Heritage Homecare

When someone in Ireland dies, it is usual for their bank account to be frozen once the bank is informed of the death.
heritagehomecare.ie heritagehomecare.ie
aib.ie

What To Do When Someone Dies

aib.ie aib.ie
 
'Can his widow access this without taking out probate.'

No. But, in straightforward cases, Probates are issuing within 6-8 weeks of lodging paperwork.

'But was wondering if there was any way around it?'

Widow could open an account with the same bank and ask for overdraft facilities, pending Probate?

mf
 
Citizens Information above says 'if the amount in an account is small' it can be released. How much is 'small'?
For Bank of Ireland the threshold is €35k. As executor and beneficiary I was able to close my Dad's account and get full access to the money.
 
After my Dad died in 2012 I opened a joint account with with AIB with my Mam in both of our names. Allowed me to pay the various bits and bobs (with oversight from my siblings) for a few years. When she died in 2017 I continued to do various transactions on the account. Albeit, this was back a few years and things may have tightened up since then, but it worked for us.

g
 
Dr Strangelove said:
It’s too late now but married couples should keep funds as much as possible in joint accounts.
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Myself and my husband have separate accounts and 1 joint account for the mortgage and bills to come from.

I have a 'death' folder with all the passwords and codes etc to each other person's bank account with a written instruction from both parties to clear the other person's account (via electronic bank transfer / Revolut) on death asap.

Not sure of the legalities of this but the last thing you need is money worries on the death of a loved one.
 
There is no reason why the bank can not offer the widow a loan pending receipt of the funds.
 
Strictly speaking, if your bank account is in your sole name, on your death that account is frozen; nobody is allowed to access it. Any instruction you have given to, or written for, the bank lapses on your death. Even if your spouse (or anyone else) is an authorised signatory on your account, the bank will not act on their instructions if they know you are dead, since their authority to act on your behalf died when you did.

The executor/administrator of your estate can access the funds in your account; nobody else. And they have to produce a grant of probate/grant of administration to do so; it takes weeks (at least) to get one.

In practice the banks are a bit more flexible. They have to be; sometimes families would be really, really stuck if a bank account is suddenly and completely frozen. Plus, funerals have to be paid for. As already outlined in this thread, up to a certain limit they will pay out funds to immediate relatives of their deceased customer. But it's discretionary, and you might not want to be depending on it.

The complete opposite is the case with joint accounts. If one of the account-holders dies, the surviving account-holder becomes the sole owner of the account and the funds in it. Nothing is frozen, and they can continue to operate the account in the normal way.

So Dr. Strangelove's advice . . .
Dr Strangelove said:
married couples should keep funds as much as possible in joint accounts.
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. . . is sound. Subject to one important qualification — on death, money (or any other asset) held in a joint account passes automatically to the other account holder; it does not form part of the deceased's estate. So if you and your spouse hold €100k, a bunch of blue-chip shares and heaven knows what else in joint accounts and your will says that your share of them (or part of your share of them) is to go to your nephew, well, it doesn't go to your nephew. It goes to your spouse. It never forms part of your estate and what your will says about it is irrevant.

So, assets should be held in a joint account with your partner if you want them to go to your partner on your death. Other assets, maybe not so much.
 
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IsleOfMan said:
There is no reason why the bank can not offer the widow a loan pending receipt of the funds.
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There is no reason they have to either. She may not appear like a good credit risk.

TomEdison said:
Strictly speaking, if your bank account is in your sole name, on your death that account is frozen; nobody is allowed to access it.
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And in practice the bank will not know until you tell them. Speaking from personal experience, I found one major Irish bank pulled the shutters fully and completely down within a hour once notified of a death via phone call.

I don’t advocate anyone doing anything unethical, but people should set up their finance in such a way that next of kin has immediate access to funds if hit by a 46A.
 
mf1 said:
'Can his widow access this without taking out probate.'

No. But, in straightforward cases, Probates are issuing within 6-8 weeks of lodging paperwork.

'But was wondering if there was any way around it?'

Widow could open an account with the same bank and ask for overdraft facilities, pending Probate?

mf
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6-9 months is the more realistic timeframe in my experience for a straightforward probate and even once probate is granted, you still need to get a tax clearance cert from revenue before funds can be distributed. Thats another month.

Banks will have a team in place to help elderly customers or customers in this position. We found Bank of Ireland very helpful, I know when my Dad died, Mam got access to the account quite quickly and when she passed, it was just some form filling by myself as executor to ensure things like DD's for power, gas etc were not stopped.
 
Yes. If you have somebody's login details and password, you can continue to operate their bank account via online banking after their death, up to the point where the bank learns that they are dead.

I'm sure know askaboutmoneyite would do this for fraudulent purposes but, hypothetically, somebody could do this for fraudulent purposes, and the banks are acutely aware of the risk. Which is why, if they find out you've being doing it, they can get quite cross about it. They've no way of knowing the purity of your intentions.

In other words, this works, until it doesn't, but the point where it doesn't can arrive quite suddenly. All-in-all, the joint account is the better solution.

Back in post #12, Sarah Ryan describes the arrangement she and her partner have:
Sarah Ryan said:
Myself and my husband have separate accounts and 1 joint account for the mortgage and bills to come from.

I have a 'death' folder with all the passwords and codes etc to each other person's bank account with a written instruction from both parties to clear the other person's account (via electronic bank transfer / Revolut) on death asap.
Click to expand...
The written instructions to the bank won't work; if you hand the bank a letter saying "my husband is dead, but he left this instruction" the bank will disregard the instruction and provide limited or no access to the husband's account. But the joint account will work as normal, and Sarah will have the funds in her own account. They could tweak the arrangement by putting a float of whatever amount they though prudent in the joint account, to make sure that some extra money would be available if one account was frozen in these unfortunate circumstances.

Or, if they have made mutual wills in which they each leave everything to the other (which is common between spouses) then they could just turn all three accounts into joint accounts. They could still use them for exactly the same purposes — one for Sarah's income and expenditure, one for her husband's, and a third for the mortgage and the joint bills. But on the death of one of them all three accounts would pass seamlessly to the other. Only downside to this is that, if unhappy differences arose between them, one of them could clean the other out, so it does require a degree of mutual trust between the couple.
 
If the account/s are accessible via internet banking and the credentials are available, the widow could log on to the account and transfer some or all of the money to an account in the widow's sole name in a different bank.

At the time my father passed away (a decade ago) my parents banking was via joint accounts in PTSB*. At the time, PTSB were notorious for freezing joint accounts on notification of death and not releasing them until probate was taken out. In my parents case there was no requirement for probate (other than to satisfy the bank) as all assets were jointly held. I opened fresh accounts for my mother in BOI, logged on to PTSB internet banking and transferred everything. My mother and siblings were fully aware of what I was proposing and approved in advance.

* I have heard that PTSB no longer behave like this, this I cannot say whether or not this is correct.
 
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