There are many good reasons to put another name on your bank account.

It mainly happens when people become elderly and they want a close relative to manage their funds and pay their bills.

When you put another name on your bank account, you are converting your account to a “jointly owned” account, meaning that when you die all the money in the account will go to the other person named.

Many people have these joint accounts and their other beneficiaries are surprised to learn that when the account holder dies, all the money goes to the other joint owner and not the person’s heirs.

This is true for all jointly owned assets, including property.

What’s worse is, it doesn’t really matter what the person’s intentions were for their future.

For example, grandma could have told you that she wanted you to get a portion of her money, but everything was in a joint account for now with grandpa so that he could manage her funds.

When grandma dies, you will get nothing.

The only and perhaps most common way that joint accounts are successfully contested is by arguing undue influence. I’ve written about undue influence here.

Essentially, undue influence means that a person used their confidential relationship with a person to coerce them into making bequests or future financial arrangements that unfairly benefitted them.

So there needs to be some sort of sensitive relationship where a person might get taken advantage of. The most common relationship that gets attacked under undue influence is the role of a caretaker.

A spritely young, unrelated aide takes care of your grandma 24/7. She manages all his affairs for her, opens her mail, makes her dinner, etc.

She asks to be put as a joint owner on the bank account worth $250,000 and tells grandma not to consult with her kids or family about it, it’s OK and it doesn’t affect her future, money will still go to her kids because she has a will. Elderly grandma agrees because she trusts the aide.

Grandma dies and the aide gets $250k and the kids get nothing. Even though the will said the kids got what was in the bank account, the joint ownership trumps the will.

This is an example of undue influence.

A person uses a position of trust against a uniquely sensitive person (like an elder) and abuses it to their advantage.

Beyond that, contesting a jointly owned transfer is an uphill battle.