How can I get back money taken out of Joint cheking account?

Question

I added my best friend onto my checking account in Hawaii, so she could have access to information while i was on exchange in Korea. This was in case I had any problems with deposits while I was away for such a long time.

Long story short...She took out all the money ($777) and closed the checking account, with pending transactions still processing. Now she refuses to give the money back. She has no history of deposits or withdraws on the account and I established the account.

She claimed she made a cashiers check out of the $777 ,made out to me ,and then sent it in the mail (phone conversation). Now she states that the money is her's and that she gave me the money when I added her name on the account (false of course).

Is there any recourse? Will a small claims court be effective? What are some good documents to have for evidence?

Thank you all!

I added my best friend onto my checking account in Hawaii last may 2006, so she could have access to information while i was on exchange in Korea for the summer. This was in case I had any problems with deposits while I was away for such a long time.

Long story short..I forgot i had her name still on the account and this month (03/01/07) She took out all the money ($777) and closed the checking account, with pending transactions still processing. Now she refuses to give the money back. She has no history of deposits or withdraws on the account and I established the account.

She claimed she made a cashiers check out of the $777 ,made out to me ,and then sent it in the mail (phone conversation). Now she states that the money is her's and that she gave me the money when I added her name on the account (false of course).

Is there any recourse? Will a small claims court be effective? What are some good documents to have for evidence?

Thank you all!

Above is the corrected version. I was not in Korea when she closed and took out the money.

Answer 1

You could try to take her to small claims court. The documents you'd need are proof that you were in Korea and history of the deposits. What do you mean by "(phone conversation)"? How were the deposits made? How was the money taken out?

Answer 2

Your only hope is to go to the bank tomorrow and speak with a manager.

Get a list of all the transactions, then go straight to the police.

They'll probably direct you to Small Claims Court since she's on the account, but hey, you never know, they might help.

Anyway, file a complaint with the cops, file a case in Court, and demand she repay you or show proof that you took the money out (obviously, you'll bring documentation that shows you were in Korea, while the withdrawals were all in cash locally, right?).

Best of luck.

Answer 3

Live and learn. Either person can close a joint account. By signing it over to her you essentially gave her the authority to make whatever decisions she deemed appropriate with the money. Obviously, she had some different ideas. The sad thing is that she sold you out for $700, What a piece of crap she is. She actually sounds like she is on drugs, and I suspect your money is gone. All in all it was not the cheapest lesson, but not the most expensive you could have had.

Answer 4

probably need an attorney on this one

but to me - looks like you are scr3wed - you put her on the account and gave her access

she had all legal right to take the money out

yeah she was not supposed to - but its a JOINT account

Answer 5

After writing all of this, I have come to the conclusion that you want to rule out the possibility of this being a criminal case first. If that is ruled out then you want to pursue a small claims civil case but only if you have a case which I think you do. You should do a bit of research first though to make sure you are not wasting your time, money and effort. Many times the respondent blows off appearing in court and you are awarded the money but the respondent never bothers to pay it. You may want to sit in on a small claims court session to see how things go with other cases.

I don't think you need an attorney unless you are interested in paying more than what you lost. You would probably go to small claims court and you may not be permitted to have an attorney represent you in small claims court. When you call the court to request the papers to file a small claims case, you can ask about attorney representation. I have paid as little as $400 for a one day quickly settled case and as much as $40,000 for a case that dragged on but was settled out of court.

I am not sure that you have a case. I did take a money and banking law course, but it was 30 years ago. You probably could buy a used money and banking law book from Amazon for not much money. It should cover the law in this area.

This is my opinion from what I remember and I may be wrong:

Most banks will allow deposits to be made to a checking account even if a person's name is not on the account. Since there would be no need to add her name to your account for her to make deposits as you stated above, it would be hard to prove to the court that you added her name solely to take care of your deposits in case anything went wrong. You would want to show that deposits were made during the time you were away to substantiate your story. Also you thought you could trust her so you didn't see the harm in adding her name.

I did not know that a bank would close a joint checking account with only the signature of one party. I thought both signatures were needed, so apparently I've forgotten at least one thing.

Checks can be signed by either party and either party can make withdrawals. It is not illegal. You say that she has no history of withdrawals on the account. There should be at least one item which is the cashier's check made out for $777. You may be able to get a copy of the withdrawal slip that was filled out for the $777. Hopefully, the bank can also give you a copy of the cashier's check. Then you will most likely see her name as the payee and the back of the check will show that she deposited it to her account. I think you are entitled to this check through the bank and I would get a copy of it before I decided how to proceed. Otherwise you may have to serve the bank with a court subpoena for evidence. The court can give you this form. You can ask for files from previous court cases and read through them to figure out how to fill out the subpoena. Courts allow a certain number of days for an entity to respond to a subpoena so you would want to schedule your court case date in line with this. That is why you need to know if you can get a copy of the cashier's check. If the bank does not respond to the subpoena, you will need to file a motion to compel. Also her name should be signed on the back of the check. Since she is deceitful you may have a surprise coming your way. She may have had the check made out to a third party. And then you will have to establish the relationship between her and the third party. A similar thing did happen to me and fortunately the third party backed me up. It was a criminal case and so she was questioned by the police. If your friend did involve a third party, you may have to subpoena the third party to appear or add the third party as a respondent to your lawsuit. Did both parties collude to take your money or did the third party cash the check and give your friend the money? If a third party is involved you should probably contact the third party to determine his or her relationship to the case. If a third party is involved you can subpoena the third party to appear.

Now since you gave her the right to use the account, is she entitled to have the money? Morally she is not. It isn't fair. But, the law isn't always about fairness. There are lots of married couples with joint checking accounts where one party goes to the bank and empties out the joint checking account right before announcing an interest in divorce. In your case, you gave her access to your account and I know that the bank is not responsible for refunding you the money like they would be if she had forged your signature. But, where you may have a case is that she was supposed to act as your business manager while you were away and manage your money in this account. You read cases of managers stealing money out of the accounts of famous entertainers or little old ladies and this is sort of like that. Even if she claimed that you were going to pay her for her services, she could never prove that she did enough work to warrant taking the entire sum you had in this account. Additionally you did not tell her to close the account. You can prove this by the transactions which are still processing. You should take your passport to prove that you were in Korea and all copies of all pending transactions as well as all copies of your bank statements. You should also obtain from the bank a copy of the paper that was filed closing the account and a copy of the paper that was filed adding her name to the account. This will have been done right before you left for Korea and will substantiate your claim.

You might want to run your story past an investigator in the police department to see if there is a criminal case. You would say that your friend agreed to manage your money for you while you were away and instead she stole it. Because her name was added to your account, it may not be a criminal case. You may be able to call your bank headquarters and ask one of their attorneys as well. If this is a criminal case, then you would not go to small claims, the district attorney would handle the case and repayment would be part of her criminal sentence.