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..who is responsible for covering an overdraft? My wife still has a joint account with her ex that he refuses to close. Would she be in any part responsible for covering overdrafts made by him? The checks that he uses now have only his name on it though, not hers anymore. She was at least able to have her name taken off the checks. Thanks..

This is not a scam my friend just dumb. Have her go in and close the account. No problem

No but the point is that he could be taken in by a scam while she still has her name on the account. Could she be held responsible in that situation?

Here's some background on this.

My wife of 5 1/2 yrs still has a joint checking account with her ex. She is the primary owner of the account. Because of a number of factors explained below, the account has remained open in both their names, but her ex is the only one to currently use the account. (My wife has not touched the account since their split and the checks that he uses no longer contain her name.) It is his only checking account and he uses it to pay all his bills, and receive his directly-desposited social security disability payment, which is his only source of income.

There are several reasons why my wife has so far chosen not to close this account. (Since she is the account owner she has the power to do so without his consent.) First, her ex has Huntington's Disease, which can impair one's ability to comprehend and do simple things like opening & closing bank accounts. She has tried to talk him through the process and offered to help him establish an account of his own, but all of her efforts have met resistance. To complicate her efforts to be helpful in this regard, he is also an active alcoholic, and is paranoid and suspicious about any help that is offered. He also has a violent history, and so simply closing the account without his agreement or understanding may be to invite more problems than it's worth. She has already talked to the bank on 3 separate occasions about simply having her name removed from the account, but they have told her each time that this cannot be done without closing the account.

And so for the past 6 years this has been the status quo with this account. We monitor it as he bounces checks with random precision every couple months, alerting him when his balance gets low and trying to help him understand how he can keep from bouncing checks. Maybe this is the course we should just continue on until his disease(s) run their course.

However...
I dread for the day when he is taken in by a counterfeit check scam and the account is suddently overdrawn by thousands of dollars.

And so I have some questions.

If and/or when this happens, would my wife, being the account owner, be in any part responsible for the loss?

Is there anything she can do, short of closing the account, to absolve herself in advance of any responsibility should this happen? (Send some kind of legal letter to the bank for example)

If closing it is the only option to wash her hands of this account, should this be considered considering her ex's violent temperment? I guess this is simply a matter of weighing the relative risks of each scenario.

In any case, thanks in advance for your input.

Yes. No. Can't answer that for you and your situation.

Your wife is still an owner of this account and responsible for anything that goes through it. That's why the bank will not let her take her name off the account and insists she close the account instead. I have never heard of legal letter to get a person out of being responsible for activity in an account they are a co-owner of, I've been in banking for 15 years.

Giving his condition, temperament, and probably unpredictability, I would have her close the account and would have done it years ago. Maybe she could help him set up a new account, getting any automatic drafts or payments switch for him and be done with him. Good luck. I hope your able to work this out soon.