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

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..

That was a good plan lucky.

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.

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.

LPAs have been superceded by PoAs.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.

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.

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.

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

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!

Can I suggest that whatever you do you do have a joint bank account so that there is some accessible money when one of you dies. My mother had no cash when my father died and the bank had to give her a loan so she could shop, very distressing. My sister and I did a shop for her just to get over the first few days. My father had always transferred money to her account when she needed it.

From the day we got married we have had join t accounts. We trust each other to spend sensibly and never fall out over money.

We had joint bank accounts from the very start of our married life. We had PofA to each other (and our children) from about the age or 50. Our savings (not vast!) were in joint accounts initially, but eventually we put them into separate accounts.

We decided to divide the savings with me having more than him. This was a reasoned decision as it looked probable that he was the most likely to be first to need care of some sort in the future. As it happened we guessed right on that score, so when he needed care, social services could only take into account his savings when assessing him for contributions to the cost. Mine were ignored - indeed they were not even allowed to ask if I had any. This meant that when he died last year I was left with a bit of a cushion to fall back on - all his savings were gone, having been spent on his care, but mine were still intact.

Our joint bank account and PofAs meant that, when he became so ill and when he died, life was very simple for me in terms of finances. I had full access to our current account funds (as it was a joint account), to my savings and also to his, as they were in the form of premium bonds and I had his account number and was able to simply go online and take money from his bonds to pay for his care.

There was no need for probate, as it was all so simple.

If you jointly own a property it is worth finding out whether it is as "tenants in common" or "joint tenants" - if it is the latter then ownership automatically passes to a surviving spouse. I believe things are slightly more complicated if it is the former.

All these things are worth sorting now - I cannot tell you how much difference it made to not have to worry about accessing money when my OH needed care and when he died.

The only delay was over me getting a share of his NHS pension as his widow. He only had a small pension as he had to leave the NHS in his early 40s because of ill health, but I had assumed I was entitled to half of that when he died. And as it turned out that is what happened. But it was an anxious time for me for the first few months as I did not know whether I was to be the beneficiary or not. They would not tell me this and froze his pension initially. This anxiety could have been avoided if we had talked about who he had assigned his pension to after his death. I assumed that it was me, but had to wait a while to have that confirmed. So....it might be worth discussing that now and making sure that you are the assigned beneficiary or you could be a bit on limbo when one dies. It was an anxious moment.

FYI - I recently had to do probate for my late mum. Which involved her flat and money (all under 200k) so not huge amounts.
Submitted the probate paperwork on line. Got a instant received reply and within 15 mins another email, saying granted with corresponding paperwork, astonished to say the least!
I know nothing to do with banks but wanted to put that out there as still amazed!

We have always been the same but my point above stands - there could be implications as far as care costs are concerned and to split your accounts later on could be seen as deprivation of assets.

Same as Calendargirl; once married we had joint accounts, there was never any his or her accounts. Never argued about money, it was just 'ours'. When DH died the bank just changed the account to my name, no problems.

We’re the same as you Calendargirl.
We both trust each other to not make too many frivolous purchases.

oops...typo alert

'joint would be frozen' should of course read 'joint account would be frozen'

fingers faster than brain here.

We’ve always had a joint current account.

I used to have savings a/cs in my own name - for tax purposes, dh usually earned more so it made sense - but it was always ‘our’ money.

grannyticktock Thank you for that, I understood that if an estate exceeded about £25,000 a probate form needed to be completed and submitted, even if it was decided that probate was not required.

I think it was to do with the dangers of tax fraud.

Thanks very much everyone. Some really excellent advice there and issues/implications that I'd not considered.

A big one for me is LPA is I had thought that if everything was in joint names LPA would not be needed - when it turns out that the joint would be frozen if either DH or I no longer had mental capacity.

Another big one is the funding issues around social care if either of us ever had social care needs.

I think DH and I need to have a rethink on this one.

Thanks so much again

Same here calendargirl

Monica, that's not the case. We owned our house jointly, and by the time my husband died after a long illness, we had all our cash assets either in my name or in the joint current account. This money automatically became mine when he died, and so did the house. I rang and spoke to the probate office and they told me there was no need for probate as everything now belonged to me. So although my husband left a valid will, I never had to show it to anyone. I think I did have to re-register the property to have my husband's name removed from the title deeds, but the will wasn't needed for this, just (I think) the death certificate.

We have a joint account for paying the bills, and always have had. We also have our own individual accounts.

My mum opened a joint account with me after my dad died. I had nothing to do with it while she was alive - it was all her money - but she wanted me to be able to pay for her funeral etc.

I was able to access the account when she died, but was only allowed to withdraw half of it until probate had been granted.

We have joint account and have had this since the day we wed. He always earned more than me in the early days but I have caught up somewhat in the last ten years. Surely if one of us died the account would stay in the others name? I have personal savings in my name but class it as our nest egg for later.

As kittylester said, you need to consider a Power of Attorney for both.