DH and I thinking of putting our bank accounts in joint names

I agree with kittylester that a joint account could be frozen in some circumstances. Although we have a joint account we have put an amount each in single accounts to tide the remaining person over while it is sorted out. Belt and braces!

Up front joint accounts no secrets or surprises been there wore the t shirt first marriage.

There is one downside, I know of, to joint accounts. If you do this you must both name the same attorneys in any Powers of Attorney you make, because your attorneys can only act for the individual and with joint accounts, any action by an attorney affects the assets of the joint account holder, for whom they are not attorney.

I had to deal with some elderly relations who made their PoAs separately with different attorneys appointed and then made all their bank accounts joint.

Thankfully, when they were both diagnosed with dementia , we discovered that one attorney was common to both, but, as a result, the full burden of financial management fell on her as she was the only one who could act for both in relation to the bank accounts and income that paid for their needs and care.

I was one of the other attorneys, I could make all kinds of decisions about welfare etc, but as soon as money was involved it had to be sent to the joint attorney. It did cause some problems.

Thanks again everyone for sharing more of your thoughts on this. It really is helping very much with our thinking on what to do.

DH has an current account for incomings and outgoings with all the household bills in his name, and 2 other accounts (all with the same bank) for his capital.

We are thinking that the way to go is for his current account to be in joint names so that we have a seamless and hopefully stressfree situation for the bills if anything happened to him first. (and as one poster has cautioned, I will definately need to get a handle on passwords etc for the bills most of which DH deals with on line from his own email account).

We'll keep all the other accounts as they are solely in our own respective names. Its interesting that banks have their own thresholds of when they will release monies from an account without probate when somebody dies. They have their own discretion on this ranging from £5,000 to £50,000. The two banks where DH and I have our own accounts have a threshold of £50k. I found this out when I tripped over the link below when looking into it earlier which lists the thresholds for each of the main banks. As its very unlikely that that either of us will have more than £50k each in our own savings account within the next few years,, to go down the path of having everything in joint names just to avoid probate looks to be pretty pointless.
farewill.com/articles/when-is-probate-required

And of course we must must must sort out LPA for each of us with or without joint accounts. And picking up on MOnica's point, have the same persons name as attourneys on each LPA - we don't have any children and we are thinking in addition to DH for me and me for DH, having his best friend and my best friend as attourneys for each of us - providing they are both agreeable to this of course.

Another interesting thing I found out today is that here where we live in Wales, the first £50,000 in capital is ignored for social care in a care home, (and the first £24k ignored for social care in one's own home). The Welsh capital threshold for social care is considerably more generous than the other 3 nations in the UK.

Thanks again for all of your help and advice, you've all been brilliant.

LPAs have been superceded by PoAs.

Lucky is correct that a spouse's savings cannot be taken into account but that doesn't mean that they cannot look back on the accounts of the person needing care and investigate anything they might think looks like deprivation of assets and, in some cases, there have been requests for the money to be returned so it can be used for care.

We decided to put everything in joint names years ago. Having seen how much more trouble it is to deal with things when bereaved this allows you to much more easily access your finances and does away with probate in most cases. Your home should be in joint names to avoid using your tax allowance which can then be used by your children.

kitty - our savings split was decades ago and we did this to try and avoid an accusation of deprivation of assets. As it happened they did not ask about my savings at all. I still think do it sooner rather than later just in case.

Having a joint current account was a huge help when OH died - I knew how much I had and what my outgoings were.

That was a good plan lucky.

I worked in a bank and joint accounts were never frozen they worked on the basis of " either or survivor " this used to be written on bankbooks . In Scotland you cannot get round not funding care ,all monies in the household are assessed and split 50/50 so it is not sensible to downsize after one of you go into a home .
Do not just put bank accounts in joint names but do so for all utility bills as well . My husband has told the credit card company I can act on his behalf though the account is in his name only . Think of all outgoings and make them joint .
We have always said if one of us was going to live for only a short time we would take that person off a lot of the accounts to make life simple for the other person. It is a good idea to have one savings account in your own name as well for ready money if needed or just to buy the other person gifts etc..