Yes that’s the usual practice with most, if not all, high street banks in this scenario.
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HSBC sorted it out for my dad when my mum died.
They forgot to remove her as a card holder on the credit card account, but that’s a different story.
Could you CASS from Joint to Personal?
I’ve recently had to help my Grandad through this.
Monzo haven’t yet closed my grandparents joint account, although they did advise us to move all their direct debits and standing orders to my Grandad’s personal account. And they would close the joint account once everything is ready. Although there hasn’t been any push from their side (my Nan passed away 5 months ago).
The main point is that everything was left as normal, and my Grandad could continue using the joint account. So there is no sudden closing of the account which maybe the T&C’s suggests?
The process for moving things across could definitely be a lot easier though. And as some have said it does add extra stress to the matter having to get in touch with each company to move things over. Plus my Grandad on his own wouldn’t have been able to do this.
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Just to share my experience of this with first direct. They are able to change a sole account to a joint account but not automatically change a joint to a sole account.
They were able to keep the joint account open until my sole account had been opened and then I transferred the balance, and i contacted companies to update direct debit details etc.
I don’t think it’s fair to say all legacy banks can just swop a joint account over to an individual bank automatically but the important thing is that banks are able to offer support and assistance during traumatic occasions. I don’t disagree with Monzo terms and conditions the proof is how they (and any organisation) are able to support a customer through this scenario.
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Interesting to hear about the first direct experience.
Mrs. S & I have both had previous experience (with a deceased parent leaving a surviving parent & a joint account) at HSBC and Lloyds. Both were able to change a JA into a sole account keeping the same sort code & account number and with no disruption to DDs and incoming payments.
That’s strange, because First Direct’s Account Terms & Conditions say they will convert a joint account to a sole account when one of the account holders dies:
“We won’t convert a joint account into a sole account unless one of the account holders has died…
If an account holder dies, we can transfer the account into the name of any other account holder. To do this, we need to see proof of death (usually a death certificate).”
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This was 18 years ago so things may have changed since then.
Like I say the way I was supported by First Direct was absolutely fine, they even followed up a week later without me asking to check everything was ok with my account etc and if I needed anything.
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Thanks @wrn7, and thanks everyone else for the helpful replies. I popped into HSBC earlier where no-one had any interest in even speaking to me. Then popped into Nationwide where someone immediately il asked if they could help.
I explained the situation and without consulting anyone else they assured me that their standard process is to simply convert joint account to sole account on the death of one accountholder, and there’d be no need to do anything else (except perhaps change the names on utilities who insist that one half of a couple must be the accountholder).
Also said that as we’re new customers and ID would be required the two of us could just pop into branch, no appointment necessary, and they’d take us through the process within a few minutes. I’m fine with a branch visit if it solves this issue for us.
I think we’ve found our new household bills account. Shopping / petrol spend and joint savings pots can stay with Monzo, but bills will move to Nationwide.
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Nationwide are generally great having dealt with one of mums accounts there.
Lloyds were exceptional! Halifax surprisingly not so, until I took death certificate and funeral invoice.
While only a child of the account holder, Nationwide and Lloyds handled everything great, my sister dealt with Starling and they’ve also been great.
Halifax were a piece of work.
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Yes I have to agree with you that Lloyds were also exceptional when my Dad unexpectedly died - I already had an appointment to go in and activate my Mum’s LPA (as she had recently had a stroke & gone into care) but, during the few days between making & keeping the appointment, on arrival I was able to present them with a bonus opportunity to handle a death as well as an LPA! 
The staff member who dealt with all this was absolutely brilliant and handled everything very efficiently & compassionately - considering that she’d just completed all the training a few days previously and it was her first real world case…
Anyway, our old first direct JA is still active (but unused) so we’re seriously considering doing a switch of the Monzo JA back to them. Mainly because this is one thing that FD will do better than Monzo when the time comes. We don’t really want to do this, because we consider Monzo to be our main bank, but equally we think it’s unlikely that Monzo will change anything on this point.
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This thread has been inactive for a few months but it was the first to come up when I searched.
I’m currently going through this - my wife died (aged 60) three weeks ago and Yes, they say they will not transfer the joint account to my sole name (although she has a will and I am the sole beneficiary), so I can just get busy contacting all the companies we have direct debits with to give them new account details. I cannot use the CASS service to switch banks as it’s a joint account and I would need my wife’s permission.
Currently asking for them to escalate it to a manager.
Has anyone ever had any luck contacting the CEO?
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Firstly, very sorry to read of your loss @RogerT. My condolences. Not that any words I can write will help with what you’re going through.
Secondly, this has reminded me that I need to get an account sorted with Nationwide.
May I ask if you’re currently able to use the joint account at all? The fact that you can’t use CASS is an added complication.
This seems to be a problem with Monzo’s design which only allows one personal account.
Hi @RogerT - I am sorry to hear of your loss.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen, or followed any of the information in the Monzo Blog post for times like this:
Hi Chris, aye, I can still use the account, so no inconvenience yet.
David, thanks for the link.
Just to conclude on this, we ended up keeping our Monzo Joint a/c open (rather than CASS it back to our ancient - but still open! - FD Joint a/c).
Dealt with all the DDs on the Monzo Joint a/c manually (i.e. by contacting all the originators and getting new DDs set up on the FD Joint a/c over a period of 2 or 3 weeks).
No interruption of collections or missed payments. So Monzo Joint a/c “popping off” when the first one of us “pops off” will be one less thing for the surviving spouse to need to bother about!
Still both using our Monzo Personal a/cs as our main bank for everything else though.
Still a little bit disappointed that, despite flagging the difference in handling this scenario by Monzo and pretty much every other bank, I got no acknowledgment or response or discussion at all…
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Yes, we’re doing the same. We have an existing, very old Smile joint account but won’t be using that as I want something I can use as a connected account with Monzo for visibility. We’ll keep the Monzo joint account for joint pots and household spending but DDs for bills will move elsewhere.
Perhaps all the Monzo staff are just so young they haven’t considered their own mortality yet, and the Monzo customer demographic is certainly skewed towards younger people. But that’s not to say that there aren’t older customers and to me this is another example of Monzo just not being a properly grown-up bank yet.
At our ages we’re now actively and seriously planning for the eventuality of one or both of us popping our clogs and part of that means making things easier for the survivor in the more likely event that it’s just one of us who goes.
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Yeah it was just the DDs that was our main concern. So the FD Joint has a purpose in life once again. As a pair of 60+ old ‘uns ourselves, sounds like we’re thinking along the same lines as you. And yes I think you may be correct about the reason why we’ve had to do this at all - but maybe a future version of Monzo will one day understand some of the issues that older folk think about!
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