Can I stop paying his bills?

[keepingupwiththejoneses]

I am currently in the middle of separating from H. He is refusing to leave our house and isn't contribute to the household. All our bill come out of our joint account, including his mobile and car insurance. Can I cancel them? I can't afford to pay them anyway so if I do something else will suffer anyway.

Should say, the only money going into the joint account is TC, kids DLA and my carers allowance.

I would close the joint account. And tell him that you have - if you've separated, there's no need for a joint account, is there? Then it's up to him to work out how he's going to pay for his mobile.

does he have an account for his own benefits?

He has no benefits, he works self employed and uses his own account for that.
The car insurance is actually for his work van that only he uses, I am not even on the insurance.

Just speak to the bank! Tell them you are separating and you want to open your own account. They will help you with this, and transfer all credits and any direct debits/standing orders in your name to the new account.

Actually your existing bank might not be much help switching internally unless there's fraud on the account (sad but true).

What I would do is open your own account in your sole name. If you just have a handful of Direct Debits and standing orders then I would contact each organisation separately and move them over. Then take your name off the joint account leaving him with his own direct debits to pay.

If you have quite a few DDs then open a new account with another bank, get them to switch everything over then cancel his direct debits and close the joint account.

Either way get a new account opened ASAP and contact tax credits etc and get everything paid into the new account. Make sure you draw out everything in the account before closing it or taking your name off because you will either get a cheque made payable to both of you or one each for half the balance or you'll find yourself with no access to the account with money in it.

Personally I'd switch the account away and close the old one to be certain of severing the relationship. Make sure all joint accounts are closed because a bank can take from your personal accounts to pay off joint debts if ex falls behind on payments.

Well I can only speak from a friend's experience with NatWest where she and her H had a joint account. She went into the local high street branch and they were happy enough to open a new account for her and switched everything in her name to it. Banks will generally be helpful on this nowadays because they know their competitors offer easy switching.

They also gave her a list of the credit sources for her to contact, so it was all done and dusted in one day.

Having said that - she was a long-standing customer, and she had all the necessary documentation with her. Plus the customer service person was nice and helpful, so maybe she was lucky in that respect.

Don't go at lunchtime!

PS they couldn't actually close the joint account without contacting the H, but as all the remaining activity was in his name, it didn't actually matter to her.

Well I can only speak from 10 years experiencing working as a manager in the industry for a variety of different banks and knowledge of the law relating to banking. I would like things to be better - the reality is it often isn't so preparing for the worst is prudent IMO.

The 10:51 post is incorrect. If an account is set up as "either signature" which all personal current/cheaque accounts are (unless there is a power of attorney or trustee arrangement in place or some other extraordinary formal arrangement agreed to by both parties) then either party can withdraw and/or close the account without notifying or getting the permission of the other party. A closure is just a final withdrawal really and you wouldn't expect the bank to ask Mr Account Holder's permission for Mrs Account Holder to use her debit card to pay for the Sainsbury's shopping which is a withdrawal via third party.

Op severe your financial relationship ASAP and take the quickest way possible.

Thank you all for your replies. I already have another account so I will use that. I have so far contacted DLA carers allowance and child benefit and changed the bank details, I have cancelled his DD but unfortunately can't close the account until after 28th as the CA can't guarantee the earlier payments will go to the other account. Will have to make time to sit on hold for TC for a good while as they seem to be very busy.
olgaga I am with natwest and they are very good, have allowed DD's to go through even without having enough money in them, they also give you till 2.30pm to get the money into your account to cover any DD or SO. I have been with them for about 10 years.

Have you cancelled your debit cards for the account? Otherwise ex can withdraw everything in the account and take it overdrawn and the bank are within their rights to take the money from your other account to pay the debt off because you are jointly liable.

Also cancel cheque books. Make the account as inaccessible as possible until you can close it off.

Thinking about it, some banks will require you both to sign to remove one of you from the account. There is no strict legal reason why they have to but they do it to cover themselves in case something goes wrong and to prove the remaining party has accepted sole liability for the account (although terms and conditions already allow for that).

Katie I bow and scrape to your vastly superior knowledge, I was only relating what happened in my friend's case.

No doubt they wanted to contact the H first in the hope he would open another account with them.

Either way, it affected my friend not one bit.

No need for the sarcasm olgaga. Some of us speak from personal experience, some professional. Some a bit of both. All views are welcome on MN as long as they're expressed politely or with humour.

Yes, of course they need to be received with a sense of humour too.

kate I haven't cancelled the cards as yet as I need to access them for now. The account is extremely basic so no option for going overdrawn unless bank charges and no cheque books thankfully.

I have closed a joint account in RBS a wile back without them contacting H so presumably as they are the same bank I presume Natwest would be the same?

All done, everything changed over to my bank account, just got to wait for the payments to start going in and I can close the joint account

Well done!