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Does my sister get to keep money intended for funeral costs?
Question:
Before he died, my dad put my sister’s name on one of his checking accounts, which had enough money in it to cover funeral expenses. My siblings and I all understood that Dad meant the money to be used for the cost of the funeral; he just put my sister’s name on the account to make it easier for her to get access to the money quickly. But now, my sister is saying that all the money in the account is hers and that she should be paid back for what she spent on the funeral. What can we do?
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The kind of problem you describe happens ALL the time—but that doesn’t make it any easier to solve. Well-meaning parents add their grown children as co-owners on bank accounts, real estate, and more, and it rarely turns out well.
Whether or not everyone “understood” that the money in the account was to be used for funeral expenses, it looks like your sister inherited it fair and square. Almost all joint bank accounts have what’s called a “right of survivorship,” which simply means that a surviving co-owner inherits all the funds. So unless you have independent proof that Dad intended something different, she’s legally entitled to the money, and she has a valid claim against the estate. If sibling pressure doesn’t work, the estate will have to reimburse her.