Posted on 10/27/2004 9:23:02 PM PDT by GYPSY286
Dude! No one should do business with you!
Do you slip and fall in grocery stores and sue too?
Do you rob people who defend themselves and sue them for injuries?
Do you take candy from babies?
Sheesh!
We need to hear from the guy whose kids got the money. Was the amount signed for the same amount as was deposited?
Or, as we heard earlier in the thread by someone else, was it something like this. 1). The IRA has a stock value. 2). The kids and the bank sign based on that value and the amount established. 3). By the time the bank posts the transaction, the IRA stock value drops so the bank tries to readjust the amount.
You are pretty quick to call them crooks. I've see a lot of crap from banks. One put $50,000 in my account by mistake after losing my deposit for two weeks. Another charged me a years worth of account fees on two accounts that were closed.
I had to fight like heck in both instances and you could not believe the BS they were trying to forward. On the closed accounts incident, there was someone in front of me and someone behind me with the same situation. And they were telling all of us the accounts were never closed and we owed the money.
You can't be soft on these people Mortimere.
They should have been aware of what was supposed to be in the deposit and not have spent more, but I can see where it might be possible to have not known the exact amount of taxes withheld, interest earned to date, etc. So I have to stick up for the kids here, it sounds like a mistake.
And I think the point here is that the depositing bank did not have permission to make a withdrawal, and was wrong to have done it. Sounds like a bank error caused possession of these funds to transfer to the kids, and the right thing to do at that point would have been to ask for it back. There are legal means to force the issue of collection, and I think the money would have to be handed over voluntarily or, barring that, through garnishment after proving ownership and getting a court judgment. They can't just take it, even if it is legally theirs. I am not a lawyer - this is just what I believe to be true in general, and agreements signed by the kids with either of the banks might affect that.
That said, I naturally resist giving others (even other banks) any of my bank account numbers, and I never allow transactions, either deposits or withdrawals, that are not initiated by me, either by personally depositing checks or cash, withdrawing same, or writing and hand signing paper checks. Any "wire transfer" to or from my account would be a fraud, as I just don't ever permit it.
Gypsy, I strongly suggest you ignore everything in this thread (except the post above about why you shouldn't ask anyone on DU about do-it-yourself gall bladder operations, LOL) and call your state attorney general's office in the morning to request advice and assistance. The people there deal with this sort of thing every day. If they're not the proper governmental authority in your state, they can tell you who is and provide you with a phone number. Then file formal complaints against both banks. The response you get may not be satisfactory (I'm almost certain that federal law says banks are allowed to retrieve money accidentally deposited into the wrong account), but at least you'll require the employees at both banks to have to explain themselves and their actions to a government investigator, and then the government agency will be able to give you a logical explanation as to what happened, why, and what you can or cannot do about it.
If we agree on an amount and you come back later crying it was the wrong amount, you better have some darn good proof. I'll take your comment as a compliment.
"Dude! No one should do business with you!
Do you slip and fall in grocery stores and sue too?
Do you rob people who defend themselves and sue them for injuries?
Do you take candy from babies?
Sheesh!"
LOL I be BJungNan parts his hair like John Edwards too.
Exactly!
Get a lawyer and sue their ass. There were face to face discussions getting this whole deal set up. One party to the discussions erred and unilaterally tried to change the conditions of the agreement. This has caused you lots of pain and suffering for which you rate John Edward's sized reimbursement. With the promise (not a threat) of a law suit they should voluntarily eat their loss.
Good luck. As someone with experience in banking, allow me to toss in my $0.02, which is that they are SOL. Whenever you authorize electronic transactions to or from your account, you are invariably also preauthorizing the depositor to electronically recover any amounts erroneously transferred to you, with no further notice to you. You also (almost) invariably agree to release them from any liability for any hardship that might arise from said recovery, so long as it's money that they are, in fact, entitled to recover, which it sounds like they were in this case. Both of those gems are almost certainly contained in either the paperwork authorizing the transfer to another institution, or in the paperwork generated by the initial account opening.
Bottom line is, the bank likely already had prior authorization to do what they did, and therefore the losses John and Jane are suffering through now are more a result of the fact that they spent money they were not entitled to have, by writing checks against monies transferred in error. This is highly likely to prove a losing hand for them, in the end.
Well, don't leave us in the dark...How much was your integrity worth?
That depends if they got more money deposited into their account than they signed for. If they got the same amount they signed for and the bank is now saying it is too much, the bank needs to prove it.
If the amount that was transferred was more than what the bank told them they would get, maybe the value of the IRA went up when the final transaction was posted. That would not be the banks money. It was not the bank's IRA. Someone else in this thread said they had the very same thing happen to them.
I'm just not ready to side with the bank until I have more information so I am playing devil's advocate here a bit, and saying you may be jumping to conclusions.
No question...if it is in the paperwork, the contract, if you will, then I would agree completely, they are SOL. I missed that point in his original post. However, I would argue that after the first attempt by the depositing bank, that resulted in the NSF notice, the depositing bank should have attempted notice to and contact with the account owners. Probably wouldn't fly, but I would give it a shot. I would still offer a settlement less the NSF charges. They can take that or sue me. But then, It doesn't cost me anything to represent myself.
Who said FR was not a good place to go to get advise on a situation like this? I vote for this answer.
I am not an attorney. I can tell you that there was a case in St. Louis(don't remember the bank), where an amount larger than $100,000.00 was deposited in error to an account and the person spent the money.
The person was convicted and sentenced to jail time. However, I think it would depend on whether or not your kids knew the amount was in error.
While it is permissable for the account to be debited to correct the error, it used to be standard practice for the bank(where the account resides) to contact their customer and ask permission before debiting the account.
The bank making the original error normally would just contact the bank where the deposit was made asking for the return of funds.
I personally would not do business with a bank that debited my account without authorization, overdrew the account and then charged overdraft fees, unless they were very contrite, waived the fees, and begged my forgiveness.
I am of course assuming that the kids had no knowledge a mistake had been made.
Recover first, notify second. That's how banks almost always work, otherwise they run the risk that their erstwhile clients will (ahem) simply close down the new account, and take the money and run, so to speak. Which makes recovery more complicated and expensive, and banks always prefer simple and cheap whenever they can manage it. In any case, under the terms of the transfer or the terms of the account itself, any prior notice would surely have been a mere courtesy, rather than a legal obligation on the part of the bank. Notice after-the-fact might be a different matter, but by then it's too late for you to do anything anyway.
I would still offer a settlement less the NSF charges. They can take that or sue me. But then, It doesn't cost me anything to represent myself.
Indeed. For most non-lawyers though, I would suggest contemplating how best to cut your losses in a situation like this ;)
In a nutshell. The vast majority of electronic transactions are done quickly, safely, and in an error-free manner. But don't assume that either your bank or your creditors are infallible - it is always wise to review such transactions as a regular part of your daily/weekly/monthly money management activities. Assuming that mistakes never happen, and that the money that was taken out or put in is always exactly what it should have been is just asking for trouble - Donald Trump can probably afford to be a bit cavalier about such things, but most of the rest of us can't ;)
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