Adding Your Child to Your Bank Account is Not Such a Great Idea

By: jencu

A common means of avoiding probate is to put your child’s name on all of your accounts. This can create some serious problems, not least of which is if a creditor goes after your child’s assets and is able to attach all of your accounts. As attorney Hyman G. Darling explains, this can create some serious complications:

If your child’s name is merely added to the account as a joint owner, then another issue that may come up involves a situation where your child is sued, dies, has marital problems, or becomes disabled himself. In these circumstances, there will be an issue as to whether those assets are truly yours, or available to your child, and a governmental agency or creditor of your child may attempt to attach those assets or cause them to be ‘accessible assets.’

See the entire article here.

A better alternative is to put your account in a trust and name your child as a beneficiary or set up a POD account with the bank where you can also designate a beneficiary for the account.