IB Won't Release Deceased Client's Money

A

Arjun1

My father recently passed away.
He has a six figure account at IB and I am the advisor on the account.
My mom is the executor of his estate.
Its now been 4 weeks and counting since IB received all the official documents from the executor of his estate to close his account and send a check to his estate.

IB is the ONLY firm that has not released his funds. About ten other financial firms have all promptly released all his money. And since it is already 12/19, I'm guessing they won't release the funds till next year.

Lesson learned: following your death do not expect IB to promptly return your money to your estate. Therefore, you better have either a joint account or a POD (payable on death) account. Actually joint is safer than POD as beneficiaries may get the same treatment as executors.
 
I'm sorry to hear about your loss as well. If you PM your ticket number, I'll see if I can assist and find out what is missing or causing the delay. We had a similar case in HK this past week and we we worked closely with the family and executor of the estate to make the process go as smooth as possible.
 
I also have been trying to evaluate if the POD selection is a good choice. POD selection might even be slower than making no choice and IB releasing the account to the estate. On my death, I would expect IB to be cautious and thorough when it comes to releasing the funds of my account to be sure every thing is proper and OK.
 
First contact with IB was over a month ago. I call to notify them of the death and to inquire about the procedure to withdraw funds to his estate. They rep. I speaks to tells me he doesn't know the procedure but that IB has an estate department that handles this and they will contact me. I ask for the number of the estate department and he tells me there is no number because they don't take calls.

So I create a ticket and a guy from the estate department contacts me and sends me the documents the executor needs to fill out. She fills it out and sends all the official documents a month ago.

Two weeks after she sends all the documents I create another ticket to inquire about the funds and the guy tells me they received all the documents and the check will go out in 7-10 days.

After 7-10 days passes, I create another ticket and am told the IB Legal is still reviewing the case. The last response from IB just sounds fishy having dealt with ten other firms my father had money with. They all promptly released his funds to his estate as soon as they received the official documents.

Thanks for your reply def, I will PM you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top