IT has been 10 years since Mei Leng’s mother died but she still has not been able to get the RM10,000 she had in a joint account with her.
It was one of those “either or” joint accounts where either Mei Leng or her mother could withdraw the money. Thus, neither had anticipated problems getting the money upon other’s demise.
“The money isn’t even much and none of my siblings want it anyway. In fact they have all agreed that the money should go to me and signed away their rights to it in a letter.
“But even with the letter, the bank won’t release the money unless all of us go together to the bank in Penang.
“This is difficult as we are all busy and working in different places. Some of us are in KL and some in Penang and it’s hard to get everyone together,” she says.
The problem is Mei Leng’s mother did not make a will and that their joint account did not have a survivorship clause. Without that clause, when one party passes away, the account gets frozen.
When Jasmine’s husband, Peter, died unexpectedly in 2008 leaving her with their two young children, as distraught as she was, she managed to rush to the bank to transfer the money from their joint account to her own personal account.
“I know it’s actually illegal but I didn’t want the money to be frozen for months while I waited for the letter of administration. My first thought was for the children,” she says.
Jasmine’s husband did not leave a will and it took her months to track down other personal bank accounts and shares that he owned.
She further endured another few months and spent RM5,000 in legal fees to get the letter of administration that entitled her and her children to the assets.
Their house was in their joint names. Jasmine was only able to transfer the house title to her name in Dec 2009, one-and-a-half years after her husband’s death.
Not wanting her children to go through the ordeal that she went through, Jasmine quickly got her own will written.
Since her children are still very young, she made sure the will was detailed. She named her brother as their guardian and made a trustee company the executor and trustee of her will.
Even her kids, who are both below five, have been informed on what to do if she dies. “I have a copy of my will in the cabinet. It’s in a red file, and a blue document. I even have mock exercises with the kids. I ask them ‘what do you do if I die?’ They will run to the cabinet, open it and get out the red file and take out the blue document in it. They know they are to hand it to their uncle (her brother). And they know too that the blue document is called ‘the will’.”
Jasmine’s father had a change of heart after watching the difficulties his daughter had to go through to get hold of her dead husband’s bank account and assets. He has transferred his three-storey shophouse to her youngest brother.
“My father has owned that property for 20 years and in the past he was reluctant to transfer it to us because he was afraid we might not take care of him in his old age.
“But Peter’s death shook him and he’s given it to my brother with a verbal agreement that my brother would look after him in his old age,” she says.
- Source from The Star, 21 February 2010 by Shahanaaz Habib.
