Capital Overpayment, joint account..

Received a call this afternoon from a tenant who has been told he has an ocerpayment of £11k for HB and £4k CT.

He is joint account holder with a friend and has no access to the capital until the death of the friend when he becomes the exacutor.
HB have assessed him as having half the total savings although their internal fraud section decided not to pursue the tenant.

This man is single and does not live with the friend who has the account..

I will submit an appeal on Monday but looking for a few clues to get the decision overturned pre appeal..

Is there anything in writing attesting to the fact that he can’t access it until the friend’s death?  A deed of trust perhaps?

I am hoping he has sometihng with him to that effect when he comes in this morning.

This, as so often with people doing strange things with money/land without legal advice, raises all sorts of problems.

It looks as if the step was taken as an informal alternative to an enduring /lasting power of attorney, to enable the tenant to manage the financial affairs of the friend but not to give the tenant any right to use it for his own benefit. This is by no means an uncommon thing if rather ill-advised. If there is any evidence at all, from the way that the money ahs been used, that the tenant has not had any personal benefit from it, this would support his story.

Is the friend able to give a corroborative statement to explain why this was done, and that he did not mean to confer any benefit on the tenant?

I’m also worried about what you say about him being his friend’s executor. He may be named as such at present in the firend’s will, but as a matter of law a will has to be capable of being changed and revoked right up to the moment of the testator’s death. The tenant may on his friend’s death be neither an executor nor a beneficiary of the will and he needs to be the beneficiary rather than the executor to get his hands on the money. This of course assumes that there is a will, as he cannot inherit anything on an intestacy, not being a relative.

As it stands, on the friend’s death the LEGAL title to the account passes to the tenant. If they own the account jointly then as usual the whole of the account passes to the other joint owner irrespective of anything the will may say (holding as joint tenants). If the whole of the money in the account belongs to the friend, then it passes according to the terms of the friend’s will, and the tenant will (if the will doesn’t leave it to him) hold it on trust for the estate and whoever the executor is will be able to demand that he pays it over to be distributed to the beneficiaries.

In short: if he has no interest in the joint account now, there is a risk that he will never get one. If however he does own it jointly, his future inheritance is pretty much assured (as long as the tenant doesn’t sever the joint tenancy.)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is the sort of thing that makes lawyers if not rich, at least pays their mortgages.

decision overturned pre appeal and client no longer named on friends account.