Trustee has cleared account

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Hi I was wondering if anyone could help, my ex husband and I are joint trustees on a Halifax save4it account set up for our daughter when she was born in 2008. The account had nearly £10,000 in it. Yesterday by chance we learned that over the space of a year her father has transferred nearly all of the money to himself. Would this be considered fraud? He has not been spending the money on our daughter.

When a young person lives with their parents, their financial situation is often assessed alongside their parents' finances. This means the overall household income and assets are taken into account when determining eligibility for legal aid.

First step, who's name is this account in, if its trustee for, or nominee for "child" then the money in the account is your daughter's and he has stolen it.
Its been a long time since I was a counter cashier, but we were always told to report when parents unashamedly told us they were withdrawing funds for themselves, its theft as the account belongs to the child and its tax fraud as savings accounts for adults were taxed at source back in 2008 and accounts for children were tax free.
I dont think you have any recourse from the bank, but I do think you have recourse to him (I'm a banker not a lawyer).
Does DD speak to him, can anyone let him know that unless he pays it back, he is going to be reported for theft and fraud. Good luck

No, no, opening an account in trust for a child is not the same thing as it being a trust.

A trust has to be set up with a lawyer and registered as a trust. There are strict rules governing trusts as tax liabilities may be involved. This is a kids savings account, it is not a trust.

OP needs to contact Halifax and explain what has happened before anything else!

Appalling as it it what this arsehole has done is not illegal but there may be cause for redress as the money has been withdrawn without the consent of the person in whose name the account is, and the money has not been spent for her benefit.

This doesn’t sound like a trust. Do you have a trust deed?

Or do you just mean it’s an account you both hold for your daughter?

They’re not the same thing and the law will be different for each.

It’s a child’s savings account that an adult/adults can have access to until child turns sixteen.

Halifax save4it OP says

Sorry you are wrong. There is a specific exemption for bare trusts created by bank accounts opened for minors.https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/trust-registration-service-manual/trsm23160

legally nothing you can do morally hes a scumbag

does your daughter know

Okay.

However, the advice is still sound. Go to Halifax and tell them what's happened.

Failing that the Financial Ombudsman Service will be next port of call, but they won't take it on until you have spoken to the bank first.

@ChazsBrilliantAttitude OP corrected to say its a savings account not a trust

A lot of children’s bank accounts are what is known as a bare trust. So it can be both a savings account and a trust.

See the HMRC link I’ve posted above that there are specific rules about minors’ bank accounts that are bare trusts.

I’m sorry to hear this has happened to your daughter. Unfortunately this is a very common occurrence. My niece had similar happen to her when her parents divorced. Her father (my brother) discovered his ex-wife/her mother had drawn all her savings out of her daughters Halifax trustee account (he said she’d used it to pay for a new bathroom). He was fuming as the money had been accrued over the years from contributions from grandparents/aunties/uncles etc. He contacted Halifax and I do believe the account was reimbursed. I think Banks treat each case independently so it’s worth checking with the bank directly. Some people have no morals!

Wow… just wow.

I have no advice but hand hold for you and your stress levels at this time. You must be absolutely livid.

Yes I agree with what someone else put. You might not legally have a leg to stand on, but if you explain the situation they may reimburse as a gesture of goodwill. At ten thousand pounds it may just be partial reimbursement on their part of a few hundred but it’s better than nothing.

go up in person and explain, see what they say. You could also try sending an email.

It’s not theft. He had legal access to the account.

It still can be theft. Having legal access to the account doesn’t mean the money in the account was his. It’s what he has done with the money afterwards that matters.

I have access to the stationery cupboard in the office. If I take a pen and use it for work that is fine. If I take all the pens and sell them it is theft.

With a child’s savings account like the one OP described, each parent is allowed to have unlimited withdrawals and use the money as they see fit. I had the exact same account with Halifax in the early noughties. It’s not like an account where there needs to be hard confirmation that it needs to be spent on something that is of benefit to the child.

Sadly OP should’ve got an IsA rather than a child savings account that is a free for all for any adult who has access to it

Plaster what he’s done all over the internet and write to his work that he’s an embezzler, maybe the police may able to get him on a technicality of embezzlement as the account presumably is a child’s account for your daughter, I’d so to the police station and try anyway.

Yes because I’m sure OP wants to get arrested for making false accusations/wasting police time and harassment- and have her daughter end up staying with her awful father to boot.

If you RTFT (even just OP’s posts) it’s a child’s account which both parents have access to/ can make unlimited withdrawals from. Both don’t have to sign/ they can withdrawal separately. And there are no rules or regulations legally on what the withdrawn money must be used for.

OP I’ve been thinking about this some more. If there had been very few withdrawals on the account and then a sudden pattern of extensive withdrawals over a relatively short period that should have triggered some internal questions. The FCA vulnerable customer guidance can include children in that definition so you potentially had an account for a vulnerable customer subject to an unusual pattern of withdrawals by a single signatory (not the account beneficiary) that substantially depleted the account.

I would be inclined to push Halifax hard on this point if it is the case that there was a sudden and unusual pattern of transactions on an account that had only seen periodic deposits. Make sure you use the phrases vulnerable customer and financial abuse.

If the withdrawals were unusual then I would ask Halifax why they did not challenge a sudden change to the use of a vulnerable customer’s account and given the scale the withdrawals by a single signatory why they didn’t consider financial abuse.

It’s worth a try.

Actually if this was a bare trust which many child accounts are then there are legal rules about what the ex could use the money for.

Whilst I agree that plastering accusations all over the place is a bad idea that doesn’t mean that the ex hasn’t broken the law.

Filofax are quite crafty about this by using the word “may” in their description of child savings accounts including this one. Means that they can, but they don’t legally have to ensure the withdrawal/spend is for the child’s benefit when a parent tries to make a withdrawal.

Halifax* bloody typo!