Ex doesn't want to close joint bank account

Parent Cafe
21

<p>I like when there is positive follow ups. Hope the OP has moved on</p>

22

<p>I recently requested to have my ex removed from our joint accounts. Initially my banker said we would need to close our accounts then open new ones. I was not happy with the solution because I had a lot of automatic payments out of the account. Upon further research, the banker said they now allow name(s) to be removed from accounts with notarized signature. I was able to do it same day.</p>

23

<p>Great lesson to young people. Don’t mingle your finances until you are ready to make it a more permanent commitment. This ended well, but it could have been financially destructive to one or both of them.</p>

24

<p>I know that this has been resolved for the OP, but some earlier comments mentioned that the risk of having the OP’s name on the account was all on the ex. Not exactly true. (Using OP in the following examples just for clarity, since these things are obviously no longer a problem for the OP.)

  1. If there’s a joint account, and the ex’s credit takes a hit for whatever reason, that could be counted against the credit rating as well.
  2. A lienholder, creditor or other plaintiff finding the account could also try to go after the OP to settle the debt or satisfy the judgment. While the OP would likely be able to explain the co-mingling of assets and that there were no financial entanglements left between her and the ex, that would take time and likely money to straighten out.</p>

<p>I agree that this is a good lesson. All’s well that ends well for the OP, but it’s not always the case.</p>