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Adding an adult child to a checking account is one of the most common steps I see Forest Hills and Rego Park families take when a parent starts slowing down. It solves a real problem, since someone has to pay the Con Edison bill and the co-op maintenance. It also quietly rewrites who inherits that money, and most people never intend that result.
What the account does the moment you die
Under New York Banking Law § 675, opening an account in two names payable to either owner or the survivor is prima facie evidence that both owners intended to create a joint tenancy and to vest title in the survivor. The statute puts the burden of disproving that on whoever challenges the survivor. So the balance passes by operation of law, outside your will, on the day you die. A will dividing everything equally among three children has no reach over an account carrying one child’s name.
The gaps that remain
That single transfer answers one question and leaves the rest open. It does not appoint anyone to act if you lose capacity, which takes a New York statutory power of attorney and a health care proxy. It does not name an executor to bring the estate before the Queens County Surrogate’s Court in Jamaica. It does not shield a beneficiary who receives Medicaid or who has creditor problems. I walk Kew Gardens clients through how joint accounts fit into a full New York estate plan before anything is retitled.
A spouse’s rights do not disappear
Under the New York Estates, Powers and Trusts Law § 5-1.1-A, money deposited in the name of the decedent and another person and payable to the survivor is treated as a testamentary substitute. A surviving spouse can elect against it and take the greater of $50,000 or one-third of the net estate. How the bank titled the account does not settle that question.
Convenience is a separate tool
Banking Law § 678 permits an account opened “for the convenience” of the depositor. The other person may transact on it, but there is no gift of half the deposit and no right of survivorship, so the balance stays in your estate. That is why I advise Forest Hills residents who only want help with banking to ask their branch on Austin Street or Queens Boulevard for that designation in writing, and to keep a copy.
My office sits on Union Turnpike in 11367, inside this paper’s circulation area, and these questions reach my desk from Forest Hills, Rego Park and Kew Gardens every week.
If your loved one left behind a joint bank account which needs to be collected or contested, contact us today for a free phone consultation.
Roman Aminov Estate Law firm of Queens
147-17 Union Tpke, Kew Gardens Hills, NY 11367, United States
P59P+93 Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, NY, USA
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