And now with extra hoops!

Gradually, I've closed Sandy's individual accounts and had her name removed from most of our joint accounts. I've found that there's no rush, and so I've made each change when it no longer feels so emotionally fraught.

I wasn't quite to that place with the money market account yet. But my hand was forced. I received a letter earlier this week informing me that they were switching to a different bank for checkwriting processes, so they'd need new signature cards for all checkwriting accounts. I wasn't going to forge Sandy's signature seven months after her death, and the handy thing about the money market account is the ability to write checks from it. So it was clearly time to tell them that she'd died.

I called today and a very pleasant man told me he could send me the packet I'd need to make the switch. I asked him how complicated the process was, and he proceeded to explain it to me. There'd be a basic form for me to fill out for the new account, as essentially they'd be closing the joint account and moving the money to a new account in just my name. Then there'd be what he called an affidavit of residency, which he explained they use instead of a death certificate: that would require me to provide the details of Sandy's death and I'd have to have it notarized.

Sandy in late 2001, just about the time we opened the money
market account. We started it to save money to give our
nieces and nephews as they started college, but we also
used it for emergency funding for unexpected expenses. I
pretty much cleaned it out in September, dispensing it
to nieces and nephews in lieu of the complicated trust
we'd included in Sandy's old will. (She didn't get a chance
to sign her new, simpler will in the weeks before she died.)

I interrupted him at that point. Notarized? Really? Couldn't I just send him a death certificate? No, he said again, this is what we use instead of a death certificate. I told him that seemed like an unnecessary hassle when I already have an official death certificate. He warned me that it gets worse. The third thing I'd need to send them was some official letter with a bank certification of some sort on it. Frankly, I'd stopped paying attention. This was ludicrous. I've transferred several financial accounts to my name, and I haven't had to jump through nearly this many hoops. This was one that I thought would be easy because it had been in both of our names, and when we opened it, we specified that it was joint tenancy with right of survivorship. That's right there in the name of the account: JTWROS. It should be simple just to send in a death certificate and have her name removed. But no, they needed me to do triple back flips.

It'd be simpler for me to close the account and start a new one, I said. Maybe, he said. Okay, what if I just close the account right now? Well, he could transfer the funds electronically early next week to the checking account on record. Perfect. Done. And they lost a customer. I'm unlikely to bother to open a new money market account with them; instead, I'll probably just open one at my credit union or do a little research and see if I can find one with a slightly higher yield.

So to recap: Sandy and I had an account in both of our names. Sandy died. In order to claim that account - our joint money that became mine by right of survivorship - I had to file all kinds of papers with notaries and other official documentation. But to get the money itself, I simply had to tell him to close the account and send the funds to the checking account. At that point, it doesn't matter whether Sandy's dead or standing next to me, urging me to do it. If that's the case, how could all that extra bureaucracy to simply change the name on the account possibly be useful?